Experts, investigadors i gestors van fer balanç de sis anys de treballs entorn al projecte europeu Life Tritó Montseny el dijous 1 de desembre a la Sala polivalent de Seva. La jornada de cloenda d’aquest projecte europeu va servir per repassar tots els avenços en els treballs per conservar aquest amfibi endèmic del Montseny que es troba en perill crític d’extinció i posar les bases per seguir treballant en la seva conservació més enllà del projecte europeu. Leer más.
During the spring of 2021, a group of eight biology students from Leiden set out into the dunes in search of amphibians. Using DNA, they determined the geographic origin of the animals. And guess what? In many cases they discovered exotic populations of animals that do not naturally belong in The Netherlands. Today they publish their striking results in four scientific articles. Leer más.
The results support a strong trend towards herbivory in this species with plants representing almost 74% of the diet occurrences in contrast to the 26% of animal prey. Remarkably, the plant fraction of the diet remained stable across localities but varied with size and mass in males. As males grew bigger and heavier, they significantly increased their plant matter intake. Likely, larger bodies and abdomens allowed allocating longer and more complex digestive tracts harbouring intestinal flora to better decompose plant organic compounds. This allowed heavier animals to have a richer diet regime. However, diet richness and composition were not affected by either sex or size, while the locality had a significant effect on both diet components likely in response to local variation in prey availability. Leer más.
Using an integrative approach (morphology of the adult and larvae, bioacoustics, osteology, karyotype, and molecular data), we described a new tetraploid species of Odontophrynus to the Mantiqueira mountain range, in southeastern Brazil. The data suggest that Odontophrynus toledoi sp. nov., O. juquinha and Odontophrynus sp. (aff. juquinha) comprise a clade with specimens distributed along three distinct mountain ranges in Brazil. Leer más.
Between primers, there were no significant differences in the diversity and richness of prey detected. We observed differences in the prevalence of prey identified between sampling regions both in our study and in other studies of S. salamandra diet. This COI metabarcoding study provides recommendations and resources for subsequent research using DNA metabarcoding to study amphibian diets. Leer más.
