 Salamanders in the U.S. are threatened by newly discovered kitchard fungus and the husband and wife team are studying ways to protect them. Professors Deb Miller and Matt Gray run the Amphibian Disease Laboratory at the University of Tennessee. The Appalachian Mountain Region is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots for salamanders. The 60 species that live in the Misty Mountain Forest play a crucial role in the ecosystem by eating insects such as mosquitoes. It is a fungus that seems to prefer salamander skin. We don't know why, but we are finding that it can attack frog skin as well. Skin is probably the most important organ in an amphibian's body. It's so important because some salamanders don't even have lungs. And so the skin is a major source for respiration for them. So the name is Salamander Vorens, which literally means it eats the salamander. So it destroys the skin. The skin is no longer there, but you have this coating of fungus. And at that point it's not giving any protection and the animal shuts down and dies. Over the last few years, salamander and frog populations around the world have started to decline and even go extinct because of the fungus. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service passed a moratorium on the importation of salamanders that could serve as possible host to be sal. And so that actually occurred in 2016. It was around 200 species of salamanders. So that was a good kind of first step. We now, however, have learned that B-sal can live on frogs, can infect frogs and even kill some frogs. 95% of the trade is frogs. So the threat is not gone. In fact, it's probably still there and probably still very real. They're studying how the fungus affects the skin and are developing strategies to reduce its spread, like lowering the density of salamanders in a pod system, sort of like physical distancing to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. They're also looking at fungicides and supplementing the natural microbiome of salamanders to fight off the fungus.