Berger, Lee, Hyatt, Alex D., Speare, Rick, and Longcore, Joyce E. (2005) Life cycle stages of the amphibian chytrid Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, 68 (1). pp. 51-63.

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Abstract

An overview of the morphology and life cycle of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the cause of chytridiomycosis of amphibians, is presented. We used a range of methods to examine stages of the life cycle in culture and in frog skin, and to assess ultrastructural pathology in two frogs. Methods included light microscopy, transmission electron microscopy with conventional methods as well as high pressure freezing and freeze substitution, and scanning electron microscopy with critical point drying to prepare samples as well as examination of bulk-frozen and freeze-fractured material. Although chytridiomycosis is an emerging disease, B. dendrobatidis has adaptations that suggest it has long been evolved to live within cells in the dynamic tissue of the stratified epidermis. Sporangia develop at a rate that coincides with the maturation of the cell and fungal discharge tubes usually open onto the distal surface of epidermal cells of the stratum corneum. A zone of condensed fibrillar cytoplasm occurred around some sporangia. Hyperkeratosis may be due to a hyperplastic response that leads to an increased turnover of epidermal cells and to premature keratinization and death of infected cells.

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