Giving Compass' Take:

• The Atlantic reports on the worst disease to ever be recorded called Bd (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis), which has caused extreme amounts of animal deaths and even extinction.

• It's noted that this discovery rewrote the understanding of what disease could do to wildlife. How can scientist and conservationist work together to protect our species?

• Here's an article on how human land use is threatening animal extinction. 

A century ago, a strain of pandemic flu killed up to 100 million people—5 percent of the world’s population. In 2013, a new mystery illness swept the western coast of North America, causing starfish to disintegrate. In 2015, a big-nosed Asian antelope known as the saiga lost two-thirds of its population—some 200,000 individuals—to what now looks to be a bacterial infection. But none of these devastating infections comes close to the destructive power of Bd—a singularly apocalyptic fungus that’s unrivaled in its ability not only to kill animals, but to delete entire species from existence.

Bd—Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in full—kills frogs and other amphibians by eating away at their skin and triggering fatal heart attacks. It’s often said that the fungus has caused the decline or extinction of 200 amphibian species, but that figure is almost two decades out-of-date. New figures, compiled by a team led by Ben Scheele from the Australian National University, are much worse.

Read the full article on the worst disease ever recorded by Ed Yong at The Atlantic.