Shifting precipitation regimes driven by global climate change can alter vertebrate behavior and host‐symbiont relationships, potentially compromising host resistance to pathogen invasion. In Brazil's Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot, prior research identified drought as a key factor disrupting the skin microbiome, contributing to a die‐off of pumpkin toadlets due to the invasive waterborne fungal pathogen Batrachochytr...

What happens when two emergent diseases infect the same host? In a From the Cover article in this issue of Molecular Ecology, McDonald et al. (2020) compare transcriptomic responses to co‐infection by the two chytrid fungi in the skin, liver and spleen of Eastern newts ( Notophthalmus viridescens ). Novel molecular tools, such as high‐throughput DNA sequencing for genome discovery and transcriptomics, have revolutionized our u...

Human activities often replace native forests with warmer, modified habitats that represent novel thermal environments for biodiversity. Reducing biodiversity loss hinges upon identifying which species are most sensitive to the environmental conditions that result from habitat modification. Drawing on case studies and a meta‐analysis, we examined whether observed and modelled thermal traits, including heat tolerances, variatio...

Rising temperatures, a widespread consequence of climate change, have been implicated in enigmatic amphibian declines from habitats with little apparent human impact. The pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), now widespread in Neotropical mountains, may act in synergy with climate change causing collapse in thermally stressed hosts. We measured the thermal tolerance of frogs along a wide elevational gradient i...

Widespread alteration of natural hydrologic patterns by large dams combined with peak demands for power and water delivery during summer months have resulted in frequent aseasonal flow pulses in rivers of western North America. Native species in these ecosystems have evolved with predictable annual flood‐drought cycles; thus, their likelihood of persistence may decrease in response to disruption of the seasonal synchrony betwe...

Amphibians are declining worldwide, but these declines have been particularly dramatic in tropical mountains, where high endemism and vulnerability to an introduced fungal pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), is associated with amphibian extinctions. We surveyed frogs in the Peruvian Andes in montane forests along a steep elevational gradient (1200–3700 m). We used visual encounter surveys to sample stream‐dwelling a...