It is hard to imagine that the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) once required protection in its native habitat on the Cape Peninsula and Cape Flats of South Africa. It is now established in the wild in Chile, parts of Europe, and the United States, and likely elsewhere, too, having arrived in those places as a result of trade. It is a pet for some, and a subject of laboratory study for others. It is also a carrier of Batrachochytrium dendrobatis (Bd), a fungus that has caused the demise of numerous frog species.

Whether the African clawed frog is behind the emergence of the Bd disease amphibian chytridiomycosis in the habitats to which the frog has been introduced is not completely clear. But the implications for that association are strong. African clawed frogs that carry Bd appear to be unaffected by disease, and their exportation in large numbers in the 20th century, followed by their escape or release into the environment, could have set the stage for transmission to Bd-naïve amphibian populations.

That process could have been set in motion in a big way beginning in the 1930s, when the African clawed frog was discovered to be a very useful animal for pregnancy testing in women. The test involved injecting female frogs with urine from pregnant women and waiting a few hours to see whether the frogs had ovulated and extruded eggs, their response to the presence of the pregnancy hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin. The test was accurate and simple to perform. By the 1940s, it was widely used in hospitals. High demand for the frog came on rapidly, and combined with its popular use for baiting fish and likely predation by largemouth bass that had been introduced to its habitat, it was only a matter of time before the wild supply ran out. Local breeding programs were begun and were so successful that by 1970, some 20,942 frogs were distributed in trade, with nearly one quarter of them shipped overseas. The species subsequently grew in popularity in laboratory research, particularly in the areas of teratology and developmental biology.

A recent study has again drawn attention to the potential role of the African clawed frog in the dissemination of Bd, particularly in California. The Bd prevalence rate was 13 percent among almost two dozen archived African clawed frog specimens collected in the state between 2001 and 2010. For archived specimens of six species of Xenopus from Africa, dated from 1871 to 2000, Bd prevalence rate was 2.8 percent.

The African clawed frog is not the only species implicated in the spread of Bd. While it may have brought the pathogen to areas outside of Africa, where Bd is thought to have originated, the American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana, or Lithobates catesbeianus) appears to have conspired in the dissemination process. The American bullfrog is another heavily traded species and has been found to carry mutated, highly virulent strains of Bd.