The Natal Ghost Frog breeds in late summer (March to May). The males call out from around the streams. Once the female arrives, the male grasps the female from behind in the water in the amplexus position. Leer más.
New research published today, 6th July 2022, in PLOS ONE has discovered the extent to which common toads live in trees. It is the first time that the tree climbing potential of amphibians has been investigated at a national scale. Leer más.
The open Mediterranean landscapes in both study regions have been anthropically transformed, and the pressure on their biota has accelerated over recent decades due to habitat loss and degradation. This degradation is affecting Mediterranean organisms such as snakes. The framework we developed allows citizen-science data to be used as a tool to detect population trends and to apply IUCN criterion A (Population size reduction) to species with a high level of imperfect detection or that are suspected to be inaccurately ranked in the assessment of their vulnerability. Leer más
To better understand snake fungal disease (SFD), a team of researchers has conducted a genetic study of the pathogen. The goal was to determine whether SFD originated in the U.S. or was introduced from outside the country, which could provide a historical basis for how it emerged — and ultimately inform management of the disease. Leer más.
Using pickled snakes collected decades ago and stored in an underground bunker of collections, scientists have found ways to get DNA samples from specimens previously considered near-impossible to get genetic data from. They used that DNA to solve a long-standing mystery about which family an elusive snake from the island of Borneo belongs to. Leer más.
