Vance T Vredenburg

Verified

Vance verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Vance verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• PhD
• Professor at San Francisco State University

Understanding why females prefer exaggerated male mating displays, when males offer little more than sperm in lek mating systems, has been an important challenge in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. The Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis proposes that the expression of mating displays is limited by parasitism and females choose parasite-resistant m...

Initiatives to protect 30% of Earth by 2030 prompt evaluation of how to efficiently target shortcomings in the global protected area (PA) network. Focusing on amphibians, the most vulnerable vertebrate class, we illustrate the conservation value of microreserves, a term we employ here to refer to reserves of <10 km ² . We report that the network co...

When you take the time to observe another organism, there is a sort of gravity that can take hold, a mixture of curiosity and connection that expands and strengthens the more you interact with that organism. Yet, in research, a connection with one's study organism can, at times, feel countercultural. Study organisms are sometimes viewed more as too...

Organisms within freshwater and marine environments are subject to a diverse range of often co‐occurring abiotic and biotic stressors. Despite growing awareness of the complex multistress systems at play in aquatic ecosystems, many questions remain regarding how simultaneous stressors interact with one another and jointly impact aquatic species. We...

Species with extensive geographical ranges pose special challenges to assessing drivers of wildlife disease, necessitating collaborative and large-scale analyses. The imperilled foothill yellow-legged frog (Rana boylii) inhabits a wide geographical range and variable conditions in rivers of California and Oregon (USA), and is considered threatened...

Introduction: Emerging infectious diseases are increasingly recognized as a global threat to wildlife. Pandemics in amphibians, caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), have resulted in biodiversity loss at a global scale. Genomic data suggest a complex evolutionary history of Bd lineages that vary in pathogenicity. Africa...

The amphibian skin microbiome is important in maintaining host health, but is vulnerable to perturbation from changes in biotic and abiotic conditions. Anthropogenic habitat disturbance and emerging infectious diseases are both potential disrupters of the skin microbiome, in addition to being major drivers of amphibian decline globally. We investig...

Amphibians are a clade of over 8,400 species that provide unique research opportunities and challenges. With amphibians undergoing severe global declines, we posit that assessing our current understanding of amphibians is imperative. Focusing on the past five years (2016–2020), we examine trends in amphibian research, data, and systematics. New spe...

Many countries have responded to the current global biodiversity crisis by committing to protect 30% of the Earth by 2030, a goal known as “30 x 30”. However, an excessive emphasis on megafauna to the exclusion of other species weakens our current protected area (PA) network. This limited perspective overvalues large, connected PAs, while disregard...

Growing evidence suggests that the origins of the panzootic amphibian pathogens Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) are in Asia. In Taiwan, an island hotspot of high amphibian diversity, no amphibian mass mortality events linked to Bd or Bsal have been reported. We conducted a multi-year study across thi...

Host microbial communities are increasingly seen as an important component of host health. In amphibians, the first land vertebrates that are threatened by a fungal skin disease globally, our understanding of the factors influencing the microbiome of amphibian skin remains incomplete because recent studies have focused almost exclusively on bacteri...

The recently-emerged amphibian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has had an unprecedented impact on global amphibian populations, and highlights the urgent need to develop effective mitigation strategies. We conducted in-situ antifungal treatment experiments in wild populations of the endangered mountain yellow-legged frog during o...

Amphibians are a clade of over 8,400 species that provide unique research opportunities and challenges. With amphibians undergoing severe global declines, taking stock of our current understanding of amphibians is imperative. Focusing on 2016–2020, we assessed trends in amphibian publishing, conservation research, systematics, and community resourc...

The emergence of the chytridiomycete fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), causing the disease chytridiomycosis, has caused collapse of amphibian communities in numerous mountain systems. The health of amphibians and of mountain freshwater habitats they inhabit is also threatened by ongoing changes in environmental, and anthropogenic...

The emerging fungal pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which can cause a fatal disease called chytridiomycosis, is implicated in the collapse of hundreds of host amphibian species. We describe chytridiomycosis dynamics in two co-occurring terrestrial salamander species, the Santa Lucia Mountains slender salamander, Batrachoseps luciae,...

Emerging infectious diseases have been especially devastating to amphibians, the most endangered class of vertebrates. For amphibians, the greatest disease threat is chytridiomycosis, caused by one of two chytridiomycete fungal pathogens Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal). Research over the last two dec...

Individuals within animal societies are expected to mitigate the costs and enhance the benefits associated with group living. For example, sociality can facilitate the sharing of beneficial microbes among individuals, but can also increase transmission of pathogens, representing a major cost of group living. We examined the costs of sociality in th...

The amphibian skin microbiome has been the focus of numerous studies because of the protective effects that some bacteria provide against the pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which has caused a global panzootic among amphibians. However, the mechanisms driving community structure and function in the amphibian skin microbiome are st...

A basic tenet of animal behavior is that animal groupings (e.g. schools of fishes or flocks of birds) are widely influenced by predators. Many studies have focused on communication between individuals within the same species or different species within a defined social group; but predators typically select from a number of different co‐occurring sp...

In 2020, the Reptile Database (RDB) and AmphibiaWeb (AW) celebrated their 25th and 20th anniversaries, respectively. Here, we briefly review their history and highlight the biodiversity informatics context in which AmphibiaWeb and the Reptile Database have grown for a quarter century. More specifically, we outline the similarities and differences o...

The recently-emerged amphibian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has had an unprecedented impact on global amphibian populations, and highlights the urgent need to develop effective mitigation strategies against this pathogen. We conducted field antifungal treatment experiments in populations of the endangered mountain yellow-legge...

Recruitment of beneficial microbes to protect offspring, often reducing the energetic costs of care, is now recognized as an important component of parental care in many animals. Studies on earwigs (order Dermaptera) have revealed that removal of females from egg tending increases mortality of eggs due to fungal infections, possibly caused by chang...

The fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis ( Bd ) is implicated in global mass die-offs and declines in amphibians. In Mesoamerica, the Bd epidemic wave hypothesis is supported by detection of Bd in historic museum specimens collected over the last century, yet the timing and impact of the early stages of the wave remain poorly understood....

The fungal pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), has devastated biodiversity and ecosystem health and is implicated as a driver of mass amphibian extinctions. This 100-year study investigates which environmental factors contribute to Bd prevalence in a fully terrestrial species, and determines whether infection patterns differ between a fu...

Amphibians in rural landscapes often utilize various types of artificial constructions originally designed for irrigation, livestock supply, or other purposes (e.g., water tanks or cattle troughs) as breeding sites. These sites potentially function as local refugia; however, their importance for amphibian communities has yet to be widely assessed....

Microorganisms are increasingly recognized as ecosystem-relevant components because they affect the population dynamics of hosts. Functioning at the interface of the host and pathogen, skin and gut microbiomes are vital components of immunity. Recent work reveals a strong influence of biotic and abiotic environmental factors (including the environm...

Scheele et al. (Reports, 29 March 2019, p. 1459) bring needed attention to the effects of amphibian infectious disease. However, the data and methods implicating the disease chytridiomycosis in 501 amphibian species declines are deficient. Which species are affected, and how many, remains a critical unanswered question. Amphibians are imperiled; pr...

Probiotics can ameliorate diseases of humans and wildlife, but the mechanisms remain unclear. Host responses to interventions that change their microbiota are largely uncharacterized. We applied a consortium of four natural antifungal bacteria to the skin of endangered Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs, Rana sierrae, before experimental exposure to...

Emerging infectious diseases are a growing threat to biodiversity worldwide. Outbreaks of the infectious disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), are implicated in the decline and extinction of numerous amphibian species. In Costa Rica, a major decline event occurred in 1987, more than two decades...

The Sierra Nevada Yellow-Legged Frog (Rana sierrae) has generally been viewed as a lake species, but it has increasingly been found in streams, including in the northern part of its range where it is particularly at risk. Developing effective conservation strategies has been hindered by a lack of knowledge of its basic ecological requirements in st...

Biodiversity loss is one major outcome of human-mediated ecosystem disturbance. One way that humans have triggered wildlife declines is by transporting disease-causing agents to remote areas of the world. Amphibians have been hit particularly hard by disease due in part to a globally distributed pathogenic chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobat...

Biodiversity loss is one major outcome of human-mediated ecosys- tem disturbance. One way that humans have triggered wildlife declines is by transporting disease-causing agents to remote areas of the world. Amphibians have been hit particularly hard by disease due in part to a globally distributed pathogenic chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrob...

Amphibians, the most threatened group of vertebrates, are seen as indicators of the sixth mass extinction on earth. Thousands of species are threatened with extinction and many have been affected by an emerging infectious disease, chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungal pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). However, amphibians exhibit diffe...

Microbial symbionts are increasingly recognized as playing a critical role in organismal health across a wide range of hosts. Amphibians are unique hosts in that their skin helps to regulate the exchange of water, ions, and gases, and it plays an active role in defense against pathogens through the synthesis of anti-microbial peptides. The microbio...

Numerous species of amphibians declined in Central America during the 1980s and 1990s. These declines mostly affected highland stream amphibians and have been primarily linked to chytridiomycosis, a deadly disease caused by the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). Since then, the majority of field studies on Bd in the Tropics have be...

The fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) infects the skin of amphibians and has caused severe declines and extinctions of amphibians globally. In this study, we investigate the interaction between Bd and the bacterial skin microbiome of the endangered Sierra Nevada yellow‐legged frog, Rana sierrae, using both culture‐dependent and cu...

Emerging infectious diseases are a growing threat to biodiversity worldwide. Outbreaks of the infectious disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), have caused the decline and extinction of numerous amphibian species. In Costa Rica, a major decline event occurred in 1987, more than two decades befor...

Until recently, it was assumed that the pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) was not widely distributed in warm ecosystems such as lowland tropical rainforests because high environmental temperatures limit its growth. However, several studies have documented Bd infection in lowland rainforest amphibians over the past decade. In add...

Management of hyper-virulent generalist pathogens is an emergent global challenge, yet for most disease systems we lack a basic understanding as to why some host species suffer mass mortalities, while others resist epizootics. We studied two sympatric species of frogs from the Colombian Andes, which coexist with the amphibian pathogen Batrachochytr...

Emerging infectious disease is a growing threat to global biodiversity. The infectious disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has led to the decline and extinction of hundreds of amphibian species. Severe Bd-caused epizootics have been documented in North, Central and South America—with many of t...

Predation is a strong ecological force that shapes animal communities through natural selection. Recent studies have shown the cascading effects of predation risk on ecosystems through changes in prey behavior. Minimizing predation risk may explain why multiple prey species associate together in space and time. For example, mixed‐species flocks tha...

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), a causal agent of the amphibian fungal skin disease chytridiomycosis, has been implicated in the decline and extinction of over 200 species worldwide since the 1970s. Despite almost two decades of research, the history of Bd and its global spread is not well understood. However, the spread of the Global Panzooti...

Invaded western US watersheds compared to Bd suitability. (A) Shared watersheds where Bd was recorded prior to R. catesbeiana (blue) and where R. catesbeiana was recorded in the same year or prior to Bd (black), (B) watersheds where only Bd has been recorded, and (C) watersheds where only R. catesbeiana has been recorded. (TIF)

Summary of Bd-positive records used for the Bd HSM. Species and decades in which Bd was detected in the wild in North America. (XLSX)

Training points and background sampling areas for the Bd habitat suitability model. (TIF)

A multitude of microorganisms live on and within plant and animal hosts, yet the ecology and evolution of these microbial communities remains poorly understood in many taxa. This study examined the extent to which environmental factors and host taxonomic identity explain microbiome variation within two salamander genera, Ensatina and Batrachoseps,...

Emerging infectious disease is a growing threat to global health, and recent discoveries reveal that the microbiota dwelling on and within hosts can play an important role in health and disease. To understand the capacity of skin bacteria to protect amphibian hosts from the fungal disease chytridiomycosis caused by Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (B...

Many efforts to improve science teaching in higher education focus on a few faculty members at an institution at a time, with limited published evidence on attempts to engage faculty across entire departments. We created a long-term, department-wide collaborative professional development program, Biology Faculty Explorations in Scientific Teaching...

In animals and plants, symbiotic bacteria can play an important role in disease resistance of host and are the focus of much current research. Globally, amphibian population declines and extinctions have occurred due to chytridiomycosis, a skin disease caused by the pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). Currently amphibian skin bacteria are...

Amphibians are experiencing devastating population declines globally. A major driver is chytridiomycosis, an emerging infectious disease caused by the fungal pathogens Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal). Bd was described in 1999 and has been linked with declines since the 1970s, while Bsal is a more rec...

The fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which causes the disease chytridiomycosis, has been linked to catastrophic amphibian declines throughout the world. Amphibians differ in their vulnerability to chytridiomycosis; some species experience epizootics followed by collapse while others exhibit stable host/pathogen dynamics where mo...

Raw data for susceptibility trials. This is the S1 Fig legend. (DOCX)

P-values from generalized linear models for change in relative abundances before (1998–1999) and after the epizootic (2008–2009) for leaf litter plots and visual surveys. “–”indicates that no data are available for a given survey and species; Table 2 column refers to data (population ratios and results of GLM analyses) reported in Table 2. When dat...

Videos showing symptoms of chytridiomycosis in highly infected frogs used in the susceptibility trials. Videos of diseased individuals used during the experiments. (DOCX)

Resident microbial communities living on amphibian skin can have significant effects on host health, yet the basic ecology of the host-microbiome relationship of many amphibian taxa is poorly understood. We characterized intraspecific variation in the skin microbiome of the salamander Ensatina eschscholtzii xanthoptica, a subspecies composed of fou...

Animal distributions are influenced by variation in predation risk in space, which has been described as the "landscape of fear." Many studies suggest animals also reduce predation risk by eavesdropping on heterospecific alarm calls, allowing them to occupy otherwise risky habitats. One unexplored area of study is understanding how different specie...

Amphibians are a highly threatened vertebrate group, and populations of these animals have declined drastically. An important global threat to amphibians is the pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which causes the disease chytridiomycosis. However, not all species develop chytridiomycosis when exposed to Bd. We compared susceptib...

Epizootic disease caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) is a major driver of amphibian declines, yet many amphibians declined before the pathogen was described. The Relict Leopard Frog, Rana onca (=Lithobates onca), was nearly extinct, with the exception of populations within a few geothermal springs. Growth of Bd, howev...

Freshwater biodiversity is imperiled across the globe, and multiple stressors such as habitat alteration, non-native species invasion, disease, and climate change can act in concert to threaten vulnerable taxa. The amphibian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which causes the disease chytridiomycosis, is one of the causative factor...

We provide information of the distribution, habitat, and conservation status of the harlequin frog Atelopus seminiferus, a poorly known species from northern Peru. Multiple individuals of A. seminiferus were detected inside the Alto Mayo Protected Forest, San Martin region, 87‒98 km northwest from the type locality. Additionally, we used skin swab...

The pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has been associated with global amphibian declines, but it is often difficult to discern the relative importance of Bd as a causal agent in declines that have already occurred. Retrospective analyses of museum specimens have allowed researchers to associate the timing of Bd arrival with the...

Significance Human influences are causing the disappearance of species at a rate unprecedented in millions of years. Amphibians are being particularly affected, and extinctions of many species may be inevitable. The Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog ( Rana sierrae ) was once common in the mountains of California (United States), but human impacts ha...

The fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has been identified as the primary factor in many amphibian declines around the world, yet its effect on lowland populations of California anurans, such as the foothill yellow-legged frog (Rana boylii) is poorly understood. R. boylii has declined from more than half of its former range, but ha...

While global amphibian declines are associated with the spread of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), undetected concurrent co-infection by other pathogens may be little recognized threats to amphibians. Emerging viruses in the genus Ranavirus (Rv) also cause die-offs of amphibians and other ectotherms, but the extent of their distribution globall...

Sampling locations for wild caught frogs in the Kosnipata valley, near Manu National Park, Cusco, Peru. (KML)

Infectious diseases pose a serious threat to global biodiversity. However, their ecological impacts are not independent of environmental conditions. For example, the pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which has contributed to population declines and extinctions in many amphibian species, interacts with several environmental fact...