Macquarie University built heated shelters so frogs cure themselves of chytrid fungus

The fungal disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, has driven at least 90 amphibian species to extinction worldwide and caused population declines of more than 90 percent in another 124, attacking the skin in a way that disrupts the water and electrolyte balance frogs need to keep their hearts beating. Australia's green and golden bell frog, once common enough to live in suburban letterboxes and backyards, disappeared from more than 90 percent of its native range after the fungus arrived in 1978.

The standard conservation response to a wildlife disease this severe is individual-level treatment: capture affected animals, medicate or vaccinate them one at a time, then release them, an approach that depends entirely on how many animals a research team can physically catch and handle. Against a fungus already established across wild frog populations on every continent where amphibians live, a capture-and-treat model can never operate at anything close to the scale the disease does.

Built sun-heated shelters letting frogs warm themselves past the fungus's thermal limit, so their own physiology clears the infection without capture or medication.

Chytrid fungus dies above 30°C, frogs tolerate that heat, so a warm shelter kills the pathogen without drugs.

Frogs voluntarily use the shelters, so no capture or handling is needed, removing the throughput bottleneck.

Recovered frogs develop acquired resistance, so the cure also vaccinates the population against future infection.

When a population can self-heal if given the right conditions, provide cheap access to those conditions instead of treating individuals one by one.

Frogs with access to the heated shelters had higher body temperatures and cleared their infections faster than frogs without access, and frogs that recovered this way developed strong acquired resistance: when deliberately re-exposed to the fungus, previously infected 'pathogen-experienced' frogs survived at 86 percent versus 22 percent for frogs with no prior infection.