The interplay of fungal and bacterial microbiomes on rainforest frogs following a disease outbreak

Emerging infectious diseases are a serious threat to wildlife populations, and there is growing evidence that host microbiomes play important roles in infection dynamics, possibly even mitigating diseases. Nevertheless, most research on this topic has focused only bacterial microbiomes, while fungal have been largely neglected. To help fill gap our knowledge, we examined both the of four sympatric Australian frog species, which had different population-level responses emergence chytridiomycosis, widespread disease caused by pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). We sequenced 16,884 amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) 41,774 ASVs. Bacterial communities higher richness were less variable within species than communities. correlated for ASV beta diversity (i.e., frogs with similar community composition tended also composition). This suggests either one microbial was having large impact other or they being driven environmental factors. For taxa, found little associations between Bd (prevalence intensity) individuals' ASVs diversity. However, mixed (both fungal) Bd, high potentially providing protective effect. Surprisingly, relative abundance bacteria previously shown inhibit positively associated intensity, suggesting those provides poor protection against infection.