Temperature, Chytrid & the Frog Skin Microbiome - Josh’s Frogs Podcast #72

Dr. Tom Raffel and PhD student Sergio Bermudez of Oakland University explain why, and what a frog's skin bacteria might have to do with chytrid. Sergio's project is one of our 2026 Josh's Frogs Amphibian Conservation Grant winners. He's sequencing "day zero" skin swabs from an earlier chytrid experiment with African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) to find out whether the bacteria on a frog's skin before infection can predict how hard chytrid hits it later. In this episode: • How temperature and group living changed chytrid infections • Why the frogs' skin bacteria may change because of the infection, not the temperature itself • What temperature really does to chytrid, and how that lines up with the heat treatment we used in our own outbreak (full story in episode #68) • What this could mean for probiotic treatments Learn more: Sergio's project: https://joshsfrogs.com/blog/Sergio-Bermudez-Using-Skin-Microbiome-to-Predict-Chytrid-Severity Chytrid 101: https://joshsfrogs.com/blog/Chytrid-101 Raffel Lab: https://sites.google.com/oakland.edu/raffel-lab #chytrid #frogs #amphibianconservation