Chytridiomycosis has driven the largest infectious disease-caused collapse of biodiversity in recorded history. Hundreds of amphibian species have suffered massive population losses.
The chytrid crisis represents both a conservation catastrophe and a mass welfare event. Individual frogs dying from chytridiomycosis experience electrolyte depletion leading to cardiac failure — a physiologically distressing process. The scale is enormous: entire populations have been eliminated in weeks as the disease moved through naive populations. The international pet and food trade facilitated the global spread of this pathogen. Biosecurity measures for amphibian trade, captive breeding programs for insurance populations, and research into potential treatments or biocontrol represent the primary welfare and conservation responses to an ongoing crisis that continues to threaten hundreds of species.