On the southeastern outskirts of Washington, D.C., inside the Smithsonian Institution’s cavernous Museum Support Center, one can see some frogs that no longer exist. Alcohol-filled glass jars hold preserved specimens of Incilius periglenes, the Monte Verde golden toad; the Honduran frog Craugastor chrysozetetes, which in life was olive-brown with purple palms and soles; its Costa Rican cousin, Craugastor escoces; and Atelopus ignescens, a black toad not seen in the wild for decades.
All of these extinct species are likely victims of the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which attacks the outer skin layers of amphibians, disrupting their water and electrolyte intake so severely that infected animals can die of cardiac arrest. The fungus, known familiarly as Bd, has been found in more than 500 species of amphibians in 54 countries to date, most recently in Asia. Some areas of Central America have lost more than 40 percent of their amphibian species to Bd infection.
Karen Lips, a University of Maryland herpetologist who has watched Bd march through Central American amphibian populations for almost 20 years, says no amphibian is safe: “We live in a Bd world now,” she says.
Bd is just one of several modern-day eruptions of fungal disease. White-nose syndrome, first observed in North American bats in New York State in early 2007, is thought to be caused by the fungus Geomyces destructans, and the disease is estimated to have killed well over a million cave-dwelling bats and has now spread to 19 states and four Canadian provinces. Biologists describe the epidemic as the most dramatic decline of North American wildlife in living memory.
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http://e360.yale.edu/feature/a_rise_in_fungal_diseases_is_taking_growing_toll_on_wildlife/2457/
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