Frog poo test is dung deal to give amphibian crisis the skids - via Herp Digest

Press Release University of Manchester, UK, 10.27.17

A new tool has been developed by scientists at The University of Manchester to help reverse the decline in some of the world’s most endangers species of amphibians.

Lucas Huggins and the Manchester team developed a simple way to detect parasite signals such as DNA shed out in the stool of the amphibian host , without the need to kill them. 

The worms are thought to be responsible for intensifying problems to the animals already caused by human disturbance, pollution, habitat alteration and emerging diseases.

Previously, researchers could only identify the parasitic worms by killing the potential host and carrying out laborious dissection and identification of the worms under the microscope.

The tool is welcome news to conservationists: a third of amphibian species are categorised as being under threat of extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

The research was carried out by looking for patterns that could be detected in the DNA of a wide range of parasitic worms.

Once identified, the diagnostic was tested on a diverse variety of amphibian and reptile hosts from both the wild and captivity.

We hope that the development of this diagnostic is a crucial beginning to our understanding of the role that parasites are playing along with manmade causes in amphibian species declines across the world

It successfully identified infective worms from a species of critically endangered Madagascan frog, Mantella cowani in the wild as well as different captive species.

The research is published in the journal Plos One

Lucas Huggins said: “We hope that the development of this diagnostic is a crucial beginning to our understanding of the role that parasites are playing along with manmade causes in amphibian species declines across the world. 

“We also believe it’s a valuable way to monitoring the presence of parasites in captive populations, such as zoos or in back-up colonies maintained for future release."   

Richard Preziozi, Honorary Professor in Conservation, Ecology at The University of Manchester supervised Lucas’ research. He said: “We are really excited to have developed what we believe is a key first step in the important journey of elucidating the role parasites are playing in catastrophic global amphibian declines.”

For more Information contact:

Michael Addelman, Media Relations Officer

michael.addelman@manchester,UK

Why More Parasite Diversity is Good News for Frogs-Flukes that parasitize amphibians – via Herp Digest

Discover Magazine Blog 5/24/12

The enemy of my enemy is my friend—especially if I’m a frog and my enemies are competing parasites. A recent study in PNAS found that frogs populations exposed to a more diverse set of flukes actually had lower rates of infection, with fewer frogs in the group afflicted with tiny hitchhikers.

Researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder bred Pacific chorus frogs in a lab and put their tadpoles in different tanks with anywhere from one to six different types of flukes. On average, 40% of the frogs that came into contact with only a single fluke species developed infections, while 34% of frogs exposed to four flukes and 23% of frogs exposed to six flukes were infected (the numbers for two, three flukes followed a roughly similar trend). Additionally, some of the fluke species make frogs sicker than others, and oddly enough, the frogs exposed to a greater variety of flukes had a lower proportion of infections from these dangerous species.

Most research on host-parasite interactions has focused one host–one parasite, but as this study shows, it’s a lot more complicated in the natural world. Preserving biodiversity—even biodiversity of creatures, whether flukes or microbes, that we’re not fond of—might be an important part of keeping disease down. Why that is isn’t exactly clear—the scientists who did this study, for instance, aren’t sure why frogs were better off with lots of flukes around.

But it could be analogous to what happens in humans who have the biodiversity of their gut microbes disturbed by antibiotics. Once healthy, or at least relatively harmless, microbes are wiped out, it’s easy for dangerous bacteria like C. difficile to take over their real estate and cause life-threatening disease. Something similar seems to happen with viruses: having certain viruses in your body can keep you from getting infected by other, more harmful pathogens.

In fighting off infections, thus, it could help to have allies among the enemy.