The Cold Blooded News

The Newsletter of the Colorado Herpetological Society

Volume 28, Number 9; September, 2001

Yet Another Amphibian Disease Identified in Italy

by Tim Halliday

Reprinted from Froglog, the newsletter of the Declining Amphibian Population Task Force, No.39, June, 2000.

We hear from Rita Pascolini of the University of Perugia that population declines among green frogs close to Lake Trasimeno in central Italy appear to be related to a disease that affects up to 90% of frogs sampled. The pathogen has been identified by Andrew Cunningham and Peter Daszak as Dermocystidium sp. This belongs to the Mesomycetozoa, a protist clade of fish, amphibian, and human parasites near the animal-fungal divergence. Details of this study should be published shortly.