Koo Michelle S, Vredenburg Vance T, Deck John B, Olson Deanna H, Ronnenberg Kathryn L, Wake David B
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States.
Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Front Vet Sci. 2021 Oct 4;8:728232. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2021.728232. eCollection 2021.
Emerging infectious diseases have been especially devastating to amphibians, the most endangered class of vertebrates. For amphibians, the greatest disease threat is chytridiomycosis, caused by one of two chytridiomycete fungal pathogens and (). Research over the last two decades has shown that susceptibility to this disease varies greatly with respect to a suite of host and pathogen factors such as phylogeny, geography (including abiotic factors), host community composition, and historical exposure to pathogens; yet, despite a growing body of research, a comprehensive understanding of global chytridiomycosis incidence remains elusive. In a large collaborative effort, -Maps was launched in 2007 to increase multidisciplinary investigations and understanding using compiled global occurrence data ( was not discovered until 2013). As its database functions aged and became unsustainable, we sought to address critical needs utilizing new technologies to meet the challenges of aggregating data to facilitate research on both and . Here, we introduce an advanced central online repository to archive, aggregate, and share and data collected from around the world. The Amphibian Disease Portal (https://amphibiandisease.org) addresses several critical community needs while also helping to build basic biological knowledge of chytridiomycosis. This portal could be useful for other amphibian diseases and could also be replicated for uses with other wildlife diseases. We show how the Amphibian Disease Portal provides: (1) a new repository for the legacy Maps data; (2) a repository for sample-level data to archive datasets and host published data with permanent DOIs; (3) a flexible framework to adapt to advances in field, laboratory, and informatics technologies; and (4) a global aggregation of and infection data to enable and accelerate research and conservation. The new framework for this project is built using biodiversity informatics best practices and metadata standards to ensure scientific reproducibility and linkages across other biological and biodiversity repositories.
新发传染病对两栖动物造成了特别严重的破坏，两栖动物是最濒危的脊椎动物类别。对两栖动物来说，最大的疾病威胁是壶菌病，它由两种壶菌真菌病原体之一引起。过去二十年的研究表明，对这种疾病的易感性因一系列宿主和病原体因素而有很大差异，如系统发育、地理（包括非生物因素）、宿主群落组成以及历史上接触病原体的情况；然而，尽管研究不断增加，但对全球壶菌病发病率的全面了解仍然难以实现。在一项大规模的合作努力中，“两栖动物疾病地图计划（Amphibian Disease - Maps）”于2007年启动，以利用汇编的全球疾病发生数据增加多学科调查和理解（该病原体直到2013年才被发现）。随着其数据库功能老化且无法持续，我们寻求利用新技术来满足关键需求，以应对汇总数据的挑战，从而促进对该病原体和疾病的研究。在此，我们引入一个先进的中央在线存储库，用于存档、汇总和共享从世界各地收集的该病原体和疾病数据。两栖动物疾病门户网站（https://amphibiandisease.org）满足了几个关键的社区需求，同时也有助于建立关于壶菌病的基础生物学知识。这个门户网站可能对其他两栖动物疾病有用，也可以复制用于其他野生动物疾病。我们展示了两栖动物疾病门户网站如何提供：（1）一个用于存储“两栖动物疾病地图计划”遗留数据的新存储库；（2）一个用于样本级数据的存储库，以存档数据集并以永久数字对象标识符（DOI）发布宿主数据；（3）一个灵活的框架，以适应野外、实验室和信息学技术的进步；（4）全球范围内该病原体和疾病感染数据的汇总，以推动和加速研究与保护工作。该项目的新框架是使用生物多样性信息学的最佳实践和元数据标准构建的，以确保科学的可重复性以及与其他生物和生物多样性存储库的链接。
