Batrachochytrium

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A genus of aquatic fungi in the chytrid group, notorious for causing chytridiomycosis, a deadly skin disease in frogs and other amphibians
2. A type of chytrid fungus belonging to a genus whose members parasitize amphibians and can devastate frog populations worldwide
3. Name of a fungal genus within the chytrids that infects the skin of amphibians, particularly frogs, and is linked to global population declines

Etymology: Batrachochytrium is the scientific name of a genus of chytrid fungi, and its history is a modern coinage built from Greek. The first element comes from Greek "batrakhos", meaning "frog" or "toad", and the second from "khytra", meaning "pot" or "jar", a reference to the flask-shaped sporangia these fungi produce. "Chytrid" itself derives from the Greek "khytridion", a diminutive of "khytra". The genus was named in 1999 by the mycologists Longcore, Pessier and Nichols, who described it after isolating a fungus from dead and dying amphibians in Panama. The organism, now called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, was found to be the cause of chytridiomycosis, a skin disease that has driven population declines and extinctions in many amphibian species worldwide. The name therefore records both a physical feature of the fungus and the animals it attacks, which is why the frog element appears in the name.