Credit: Todd Amacker Conservation Photography, 2020 Eastern newt populations in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada are at greatest risk of infection with a new skin-eating fungus, Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), according to a study published February 18 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Matthew Gray of the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, and colleagues. Bsal was discovered killing salamanders in the Netherlands in 2010, and since then, the pathogen has spread to other European countries. Bsal is believed to be from Asia and is being spread through the international trade of amphibians, but it has not yet arrived in North America. As a proactive strategy for disease control, Gray and his colleagues evaluated how a range of environmental temperatures in North America could affect the invasion risk of Bsal into a widely distributed salamander species -- the eastern newt.