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How often do you get to say that you’ve worked on something that could prevent a global extinction? Assistant Professor Matthew Venesky, Ph.D., and students Julie Murone and Joe DeMarchi can.

Professor Venesky, who recently published a paper in Nature, an international science journal, on helping amphibians resist the Bd pathogen (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis), worked with Murone and DeMarchi this summer to research the relationship between stress and immune response (to the Bd fungus).

Bd is a pathogenic fungus linked to “catastrophic declines” in amphibian populations worldwide, and understanding it is key to restoring amphibian populations that have been ravaged by Bd-related deaths.