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Symbiotic bacterial communities resident on amphibian skin can benefit their hosts. For example, antibiotic production by community members can control the pathogen  Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis  ( Bd ) and it is possible for these community members to be used as probiotics to reduce infection levels. In the early 1990s, the emergence of  Bd  caused declines and disappearances of frogs in the Australian Wet Tropics; the severity of its effects varied among species and sites. Some species have since recolonized despite enzootic  Bd  within their populations. This variation in history among species and sites provided an opportunity to investigate the role of anti-fungal cutaneous bacteria in protecting frogs against  Bd  infection. We collected cutaneous swab samples from three species of frogs at two upland and two lowland sites in the Wet Tropics, and used  in vitro  challenge assays to identify culturable  Bd -inhibitory bacterial isolates for further analysis. We sequenced DNA from cultured inhibitory isolates to identify taxa, resulting in the classification of 16  Bd -inhibitory OTUs, and determined whether inhibitory taxa were associated with frog species, site, or intensity of infection. We present preliminary results showing that the upper limit of  Bd  infection intensity was negatively correlated with number of inhibitory OTUs present per frog indicating that increased numbers of  Bd -inhibiting taxa may play a role in reducing the intensity of  Bd  infections, facilitating frog coexistence with enzootic  Bd . One upland site had a significantly lower prevalence of  Bd  infection, a significantly higher proportion of frogs with one or more culturable  Bd -inhibitory OTUs, a greater number of inhibitory bacterial genera present per frog, and statistically significant clustering of individual frogs with similar  Bd -inhibitory signatures when compared to all other sites. This suggests that  Bd -inhibitory taxa are likely to be particularly important to frogs at this site and may have played a role in their ability to recolonize following population declines. Our findings suggest that the use of multi-taxon  Bd -inhibitory probiotics to support at-risk amphibian populations may be more effective than single-taxon alternatives.

Increased Numbers of Culturable Inhibitory Bacterial Taxa May Mitigate the Effects of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in Australian Wet Tropics Frogs