COSMOS - There’s new hope today for the future of the globe’s amphibians which are being wiped out by a devastating disease.
The fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, causes the amphibian disease chytridiomycosis.
Now, the first discovery of a virus that infects Bd has been described in a paper in the journal Current Biology, which could have important implications for the development of new research tools to study the fungus and may even hold the potential to one day help control the predator..
The virus, named BdDV-1, was found by chance by researchers working on the population genetics of chytrid to gain a better understanding about where the fungus came from and how it is mutating.
“We wanted to see how different strains of fungus differ in places like Africa, Brazil, and the US, just like people study different strains of COVID-19,” says Jason Stajich, a professor of microbiology at the University of California Riverside, and senior author of the study.