image: An eastern racer (Coluber constrictor) showing signs of fungal skin infection. Obvious external abnormalities are an opaque infected eye, roughened crusty scales on the chin, and several discolored roughened scales on the side of neck. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the 20 Dec. 2017, issue of Science Advances, published by AAAS. The paper, by Frank T. Burbrink at American Museum of Natural History in New York, N.Y., and colleagues was titled, "Host susceptibility to snake fungal disease is highly dispersed across phylogenetic and functional trait space." view more
Credit: [Credit: © USGS National Wildlife Health Center/D.E. Green]