Alexander’s work on fungal infection prevalence among amphibians and how it varies (or not) with habitat type and condition is well under way. He has been tracking through remote forests and wetlands in Costa Rica taking skin swabs from tiny and not so tiny frogs.
All it will take now is for him to take the samples back to Newcastle (pending research permits) and analyse them. This will provide him with essential data enabling him to better understand why and where amphibians get infected by Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. In the end, we can only manage for this disease, which is believed to contribute to large-scale amphibian decline worldwide, if we understand it.