A deadly frog pathogen that has been rewiring the world's ecosystems has been traced to Korea, renewing calls to stop the international pet trade of amphibians, Agence France-Presse reported.
Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, a dangerous infectious disease with the potential to drive a species to extinction, is also known as chytrid fungus, AFP said. The skin infection passed between animals in the wild and pets causes chytridiomycosis, which affects amphibians' ability to regulate water and electrolytes and could lead to heart failure.
Research pointing to the Korean peninsula as the start of the outbreak, published Friday in the journal Science, was led by the Imperial College London with the Zoological Society of London.
"Biologists have known since the 1990s that Bd was behind the decline of many amphibian species, but until now we haven't been able to identify exactly where it came from," said Simon O'Hanlon of Imperial's Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and the lead author of the study, said in a statement.
"In our paper, we solve this problem and show that the lineage which has caused such devastation can be traced back to East Asia," O'Hanlon continued.
In the Science study, a team of researchers from 38 institutions gathered samples of the pathogen from around the world and then sequenced the genomes of the samples. The researchers then combined the data with genomes from previous Bd studies to make a collection of 234 samples.
Cultures from a Korean lineage were found to contain much more genetic diversity than any other lineage. Further analysis revealed that the Korean Bd showed no history of global outbreaks within their genomes, suggesting the Korean chytrid strains were native to the region, and most closely resemble the ancestor of all modern Bd.
"Our research not only points to East Asia as ground zero for this deadly fungal pathogen, but suggests we have only uncovered the tip of the iceberg of chytrid diversity in Asia," said Matthew Fisher of Imperial's School of Public Health.
"Therefore, until the ongoing trade in infected amphibians is halted, we will continue to put our irreplaceable global amphibian biodiversity recklessly at risk."
National Geographic reported the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is actively monitoring the spread of Bd, but is not blocking the arrival of its sister lineages.
"The Bd fungus is already widely present in the environment in the United States, so regulating importation of amphibians will do little to protect native amphibians ... [and] would be minimally effective at preventing the fungus from further spreading across State lines," said Dave Miko, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's chief of fisheries and aquatic conservation.
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