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Sloughing maintains the skins integrity and critical functionality in amphibians. Given the behavioural, morphological and osmoregulatory changes that accompany sloughing, this process is likely to be physiologically costly. Chytridiomycosis, a cutaneous disease of amphibians caused by the fungus  Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis  ( Bd ), disrupts skin function and increases sloughing rates. Moreover, mortality rates from chytridiomycosis are significantly higher in juveniles and so we hypothesised that smaller individuals maybe more susceptible to chytridiomycosis because of allometric scaling effects on the energetic and osmoregulatory costs of sloughing. We measured  in-vivo  cutaneous ion loss rates and whole animal metabolic rate (MR) of Green tree frogs,  Litoria caerulea , over a range of body sizes both infected and uninfected frogs during sloughing. Infected animals had a greater rate of ion loss and mass-specific MR during non-sloughing periods but there were no additional effects of sloughing on either of these parameters. There were also significant interactions with body size and  Bd  load indicating that smaller animals with higher  Bd  loads have greater rates of ion loss and higher energetic demands. Our results shed light on why smaller  Bd -infected anurans often exhibit greater physiological disruption than larger individuals.

Body size influences energetic and osmoregulatory costs in frogs infected with Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis