ArticleEcoHealth2016
Assessing the ability of swab data to determine the true burden of infection for the amphibian pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.
Article in EcoHealth, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Differential Immune Responses Correlate With Chytridiomycosis Severity in Italian Crested Newts.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Co-Exposure with the Herbicide 2,4-D Does Not ExacerbateAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Dynamic effects of thermal acclimation on chytridiomycosis infection intensity and transmission potential inRoyal Society open science · 2024Article
- A Universal and Efficient Detection of Chytridiomycosis Infections in Amphibians Using Novel Quantitative PCR Markers.Transboundary and emerging diseases · 2023Article
- Environment is associated with chytrid infection and skin microbiome richness on an amphibian rich island (Taiwan).Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Temperature and duration of exposure drive infection intensity with the amphibian pathogenPeerJ · 2022Article
- Chytrid fungi and global amphibian declines.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2020Review
- Climate structuring ofRoyal Society open science · 2018Article
- Gene expression differs in susceptible and resistant amphibians exposed toRoyal Society open science · 2018Article
- Seasonal migrations, body temperature fluctuations, and infection dynamics in adult amphibians.PeerJ · 2018Article
- Design- and model-based recommendations for detecting and quantifying an amphibian pathogen in environmental samples.Ecology and evolution · 2017Article
- Tackling emerging fungal threats to animal health, food security and ecosystem resilience.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Article
- Overview of chytrid emergence and impacts on amphibians.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) is a pathogenic fungus which causes the disease chytridiomycosis in amphibians by infecting the animals' epidermis. The most commonly applied method for the detection of Bd is the use of a sterile swab, rubbed over the keratinized areas of an amphibian and then processed to yield DNA for detection by qPCR. This method has been used to infer a threshold of lethal infection in some species; however, how reliable and reproducible the swabbing method is at detecting the true burden of infection suffered by individuals is not known. European midwife toads, Alytes obstetricans, are susceptible to chytridiomycosis and are highly parasitised by Bd across Europe. By quantifying Bd-load throughout the entire skin and comparing this to swab results taken from the same individual, we determined whether epidermal swabs provide a quantifiable and accurate indication of the true fungal burden suffered. Further, we examined whether we could infer a threshold for lethal infection based on comparison of swab data taken from infected A. obstetricans exhibiting different clinical states. From swab data, we detected significantly higher fungal burdens from moribund metamorphs compared to visually healthy individuals; however, the ability of these swab data to provide an accurate indication of the true fungal burden was not reliable. These data suggest that fungal load dynamics play an important role in disease-induced mortality in A. obstetricans at these sites, but that using swab data to infer an exact threshold for Bd-associated mortality might be inappropriate and misleading.
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