The yellow-bellied toad is not one to let down.
When this little toad finds itself forced to coexist with humans, for example in exploited public forests, its life expectancy drops dramatically.
But a CNRS study reveals that the amphibian has been able to adapt by accelerating its life cycle to halt its decline.
"The strategy of the species consists in concentrating its efforts on reproduction and on the survival of the young rather than on that of the adults (in scientific terms, it compensates by an increase in its rate of recruitment)"
, indicates Hugo Cayuela, ecologist at the biometrics and evolutionary biology laboratory of the Claude Bernard University in Lyon, which directed this research.
This type of change in the rate of reproduction in response to human activities
“had never been observed in wild species
, underlines the researcher,
except in birds”
.
For the latter, the phenomenon is reversed: when they live in town...
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