WHITE NOSE: Little brown bats and other species of the flying mammal have been devastated by a fungal disease, known as white nose syndrome.
Image: Alan Hicks
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In 2008 Matthew Allender, a wildlife veterinarian affiliated with the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, noticed something wrong with some of the rattlesnakes he'd been studying as part of a population-monitoring program near Carlyle, Ill. His team had found three eastern massasauga rattlesnakes (Sistrurus catenatus catenatus) with severe facial swelling and disfiguration. Allender brought them back to his lab for observation. The lesions ulcerated and progressed beneath the skin. When the snakes died just three weeks later the disease had deformed their mouths, nasal passages and fangs beyond recognition.
Allender described a fungus, Chrysosporium, as the culprit. In 2010 Allender's team found another infected snake, and since then two more. Allender doesn't yet understand how the disease is transmitted—or how to stop it.
"I've never seen anything like this in wild snakes before," Allender says. "Nor has anyone else. In almost all organisms, fungi are opportunistic pathogens that attack compromised immune systems. These were otherwise healthy snakes," however, he says. Already suffering from diminishing numbers, the snake is a candidate for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's threatened species list.
Unfortunately, the rattlesnakes are only the latest example of species falling prey to fungal attack in a troubling global trend noted by public health officials, zoologists and conservationists. Fungi have afflicted species as varied as amphibians, bats, arabica coffee, mangrove crabs, wheat, coral, bees, oak trees, sea turtles and even humans. (For instance, infectious meningitis is caused by a fungus.)
The most well-documented example is the lethal amphibian fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, commonly known as chytrid. Originally reported in 1997, chytridiomycosis has infected more than 500 species of frogs and salamanders on all continents where amphibians are found, and launched half of all amphibian species into evolutionary decline. Many other species affected by fungal disease face imminent extinction, such as the European crayfish.
View a slide show of invasive fungi's trail of death and disease.
To establish whether the data scientists were gathering really did point to a dramatic shift in a deadly trend affecting numerous species, Matthew Fisher, a reader in fungal disease epidemiology at Imperial College London, and his colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of past studies available on Web of Science, an online citation index provided by Thomson Reuters, ProMED (the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases) and HealthMap, which monitors disease outbreaks in plant and animal hosts. Their findings revealed that fungi and funguslike pathogens (oomycetes) account for 65 percent of the pathogen-driven species loss in the past half century.
Perhaps it is unsurprising in a global economy, but human activity such as international trade and military operations have intensified the dispersal of fungal pathogens, delivering new foes to unprotected victims and introducing new evolutionary opportunities to previously harmless fungus species.
Long thought to reproduce asexually through mitosis, where each offspring is the identical clone of its parent, scientists have discovered fungi can also reproduce sexually, via meiosis. By nimbly changing their reproductive strategy in response to new environmental conditions, fungi transfer genetic advantages from both parents—just like humans do—giving their offspring a better shot at survival. They also readily hybridize (interbreed between different species), outcross (selectively breed with individuals of different strains within a species) and recombine (exchange genetic material during cell division).
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5 Comments
Add CommentThe article deserves more distribution and longer length.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmong the phytophthera species are others unmentioned:
cinnamomi, which was introduced to North American avocado trees, and kills about 100% when the roots are inundated in soils which do not dry. In those which do dry, the killing is slowed.
P lateralis was first noticed far north of Port Orford Cedar country, in Seattle. It was spread, a Cal State Humboldt group, discovered by the mud adhering to boots and equipment of loggers, and wastefully, by the spread of offroad vehicles, in National Forests. The method of discovery of human broadcast is interesting, in that developing disease was shown to begin high in a watershed wherever an access road was available, and spread down from there. Since Port Orford Cedar was overexploited, largely for cosmetic and superstitious use (another story), it was already in danger of extinction. With ORV use that extinction is becoming more likely. For this species, some good news: considerable USDA Forest Service surveying has found some individuals with strong resistance, and hopes to interbreed.
BTW, animals are more closely related to fungi than we are to plants; and mycorrhizae have been found to be even more pervasive and important to the life of vascular plants, and thus to all living things, than the short article above implies.
I believe the use of fungicide in agriculture contributes to fungi evolution as well. I live next door to a flower farmer who blows fungicide on his myrtle plants several times per week. It seems to me that fungus would have the ability to evolve resistance to fungicide just as bacteria evolve resistant to antibiotics. Who knows what other characteristics this fungus evolution caused by humans will bring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo what extent these problems arise from the fact that urban areas may be are growing too much? In other words: Are habitats of these species shrinking to the point that they can not longer survive? I do not think so. But if that is the case steps should be taken to provide them with enough quality breathing space. I have the sense that if they begin to die, we also begin to die. But frankly I do not think they are dying out. Probably it is just normal that snakes, and other species, get sick from time to time. But it is very valuable the studies that are been carried out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHello,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood article and some interesting claims like funghi evolution explosion as result of wars and globaltization in logistics. Could be the solution to raise attendance of blue-green algae in our daily life?
Like building enormous pools on the level of urban cities - dispersed on several places of the city, towns, states? Than in daily life of each individual?
Than for example along the logistic paths like railways to have long and narrow pools with blue gree algaes ...
What economic model should we provide on level of the town or landscapes to sense added value in daily life and this way more blue-green is our daily life.
Who should invest? Mostly those who had benefit in previous years on environment as it was and this way also agreed with the funghinization of the world. Raise of funghi populations s probably response of the nature to our consiousness. So if we do the step probably I can turn to another path. Funghi would still be needed for decay processes but it seems we are now in need for blue-green and photosintetic process to be motivated. How to make this as good investment accessible to all? How to raise consiousness of people with money in big accounts and politicians that only them have first step in the pocket for de-funghization of the towns and rural desserted areas with blue-gree.
What if the fungus ISN'T pathogenic, but is just responding to issues within the ecological system? In nature, fungus deals with death and decay. It breaks down matter into reusable substances. That in itself is not pathogenic, but responsive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat if the fungus is reacting to decay within the system due to other factors such as toxins within the environment - the air, the water, the soil, the depletion of nutritional elements within the food, or substances that are altering the nutritional elements and preventing absorption and support?
Thinking outside the box, what if the germ 'theory' is wrong? Doesn't that throw everything that we currently believe to be true out of the window? If all germs and microbes are reactive rather than pathogenic, doesn't that open up a whole new ball-game?
I was riddled with fungus - a veritable walking 'fungus-factory', but having reshaped my diet to remove anything that isn't nutritionally complete, and added supplements to make up any shortfall, the fungus is history.
We live in a nutritionally devoid world. We live in world where our food - and the food of many other species too - has been meddled with and maladjusted to the point of no return. We are sick and slowly and insidiously decaying from the inside out because our bodies lack the nutritional support needed to cope with the onslaught of modern living.
Toxic chemicals, drugs, food additives, denatured foods, air and water pollution, etc., are all undermining our health, and the health of the system around us. Natural beings were made to consume natural foods and substances. Remove or change even one element and it is no longer complete.
We as humans may have the knowledge and understanding to be able to combat the problem to a certain extent, but animals do not have that capacity and are then at the mercy of the toxic environment. Whole forests of trees are dying. Why? Because something in the air or water or soil is damaging them.
It's no good 'fighting' the fungus. Prevention is always far better than 'cure'. The only way to deal with the fungus is to STOP the rot. And the only way to stop the rot is to peel back the layers to the root cause - the toxic environment we all live in.