Host Range
Bsal is pathogenic for most western Palearctic salamander and newt taxa and is considered a major threat to the region’s biodiversity (Martel et al., 2013; Spitzen van der Sluijs et al., 2016). Salamanders and newts can be resistant (no infection, no disease), tolerant (infection in absence of disease), moderately susceptible (infection resulting in clinical disease with possibility of subsequent recovery) or highly susceptible (infection resulting in lethal disease). Infection experiments demonstrated that frogs and toads are not susceptible to the disease, but some species can act as infectious carriers (Stegen et al., 2017).
