Infectious pathogens can disrupt the microbiome in addition to directly affecting the host. Impacts of disease may be dependent on the ability of the microbiome to recover from such disturbance, yet remarkably little is known about microbiome recovery after disease, particularly in nonhuman animals. We assessed the resilience of the amphibian skin microbial community after disturbance by the pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). Skin microbial communities of laboratory-reared mountain yellow-legged frogs were tracked through three experimental phases: prior to Bd infection, after Bd infection (disturbance), and after clearing Bd infection (recovery period). Bd infection disturbed microbiome composition and altered the relative abundances of several dominant bacterial taxa. After Bd infection, frogs were treated with an antifungal drug that cleared Bd infection, but this did not lead to recovery of microbiome composition (measured as Unifrac distance) or relative abundances of dominant bacterial groups. These results indicate that Bd infection can lead to an alternate stable state in the microbiome of sensitive amphibians, or that microbiome recovery is extremely slow—in either case resilience is low. Furthermore, antifungal treatment and clearance of Bd infection had the additional effect of reducing microbial community variability, which we hypothesize results from similarity across frogs in the taxa that colonize community vacancies resulting from the removal of Bd. Our results indicate that the skin microbiota of mountain yellow-legged frogs has low resilience following Bd-induced disturbance and is further altered by the process of clearing Bd infection, which may have implications for the conservation of this endangered amphibian.

除了直接影响宿主外，传染性病原体还可以破坏微生物组。疾病的影响可能取决于微生物组从这种干扰中恢复的能力，但对于疾病后微生物组的恢复知之甚少，特别是在非人类动物中。我们评估了两栖动物皮肤微生物群落在受到病原体Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis干扰后的恢复能力（乙）。通过三个实验阶段追踪实验室饲养的山地黄腿蛙的皮肤微生物群落：Bd 感染前、Bd 感染后（干扰）和清除 Bd 感染后（恢复期）。Bd 感染扰乱了微生物组的组成并改变了几种主要细菌类群的相对丰度。在 Bd 感染后，青蛙接受了清除 Bd 感染的抗真菌药物治疗，但这并没有导致微生物组组成的恢复（以 Unifrac 距离测量）或优势细菌群的相对丰度。这些结果表明，Bd 感染可导致敏感两栖动物的微生物组出现交替稳定状态，或者微生物组恢复非常缓慢——在任何一种情况下，恢复力都很低。此外，抗真菌治疗和清除 Bd 感染具有减少微生物群落变异性的额外效果，我们假设这是由于类群中青蛙之间的相似性导致的，这些青蛙在去除 Bd 导致的群落空位上定植。我们的研究结果表明，山地黄腿蛙的皮肤微生物群在 Bd 诱导的干扰后具有低弹性，并且在清除 Bd 感染的过程中进一步改变，这可能对这种濒临灭绝的两栖动物的保护产生影响。