{"id":275877,"date":"2025-11-06T20:48:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T20:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/275877\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T20:48:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T20:48:12","slug":"three-new-species-of-rare-toads-that-give-birth-to-live-young-like-humans-discovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/275877\/","title":{"rendered":"Three new Species Of Rare Toads That Give Birth To Live Young Like Humans Discovered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amphibians like frogs and toads are a great way to observe metamorphosis<\/a>. They lay eggs that develop into tadpoles, and then these tadpoles develop into froglets and toadlets until at last we have our big, strong adults that come crawling out of the water.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Except, it doesn\u2019t always go like that. There are some amphibians that buck the egg-to-tadpole supply chain and instead do something rather incredible: they give birth to live young.<\/p>\n

Live-bearing toads<\/p>\n

In 1905, this idea was presented to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin by German researcher Gustav Tornier. Tornier was wielding a toad from Tanzania, the only one in the world at that time known to reproduce by giving birth to live young. We now know that it wasn\u2019t so unique, and, in fact, all members of the \u201ctree toad\u201d Nectophrynoides genus share this unusual reproductive strategy (which is not to be confused with the unique gastric-brooding frogs<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The mothers seem to give birth to an astonishingly large number of juveniles.<\/p>\n

Dr Mark Scherz<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are truly live-bearing, so they give birth just like us,\u201d herpetologist, evolutionary biologist, and study author Dr Mark Scherz<\/a> of the Natural History Museum Denmark told IFLScience. \u201cThe fertilisation is internal, and the embryos develop all the way to the froglet stage before being born.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mothers seem to give birth to an astonishingly large number of juveniles. Christian Thrane, first author on the study (who did his Bachelor\u2019s thesis on these frogs), counted embryos in several females, and there were more than 100 in one female!\u201d he added. Welp.<\/p>\n

\"Nectophrynoides<\/p>\n

Meet Nectophrynoides uhehe.<\/p>\n

Image credit: Michele Menegon<\/p>\n

The marvels of “museomics”<\/p>\n

At one time, all of these tree toads were known as Nectophrynoides viviparus, but we\u2019ve since realized that rather than representing one species with a huge range, the group actually contains previously unrecognized diversity. We’ve already named a few, and now another three have been formally described: Nectophrynoides luhomeroensis, Nectophrynoides uhehe, and Nectophrynoides saliensis.<\/p>\n

The team identified the new species by taking a close look at specimens housed in several natural history museums using \u201cmuseomics<\/a>\u201d. This allowed them to secure DNA sequence data and compare specimens dating from a few years to over a century old and figure out exactly which populations the museum specimens belonged to.<\/p>\n

The three new species are “pustular” toads with bulbous and brightly-colored bumps all over their bodies. Their home is Tanzania\u2019s Eastern Arc Mountains, a place which is celebrated for its biodiversity with unique species found nowhere else on Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the region is also under threat due to habitat fragmentation. A previously identified species, Nectophrynoides asperginis, is already extinct in the wild, while Nectophrynoides poyntoni\u00a0hasn\u2019t been seen since it was first described back in 2003. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Live-bearing amphibians \u2013 what’s the cost?<\/p>\n

During what appears to be an already difficult time for amphibians in Tanzania\u2019s Eastern Arc Mountains, it’s important to better understand the unique wildlife living there if we’re going to protect it. Part of that involves understanding at what cost carrying around ~100 embryos comes to for a toad.<\/p>\n

Viviparity is also likely much more energetically costly for females and may have important implications on the mobility and agility of individuals during gestation.<\/p>\n

Christoph Liedtke<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile viviparity may allow for better protection of developing embryos from the environment to ensure higher survival rates, viviparous amphibians (as is the case for other vertebrates) tend to have less offspring per reproductive cycle compared to oviparous species,\u201d study author Christoph Liedtke<\/a> from the Spanish National Research Council told IFLScience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA potential downside may therefore be lower reproductive rates, although very little is known about embryo and offspring survival in these toads, and how this ultimately compares to the survival rates of toad species in the same family that can lay tens of thousands of eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cViviparity is also likely much more energetically costly for females and may have important implications on the mobility and agility of individuals during gestation. It is noteworthy\u00a0that viviparity is extremely rare in frogs and\u00a0toads and so while\u00a0it may bring very specific benefits, like being able to inhabit environments where suitable sites for aquatic larvae are scarce, generally speaking, egg laying is the more successful reproductive strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The future for Tanzania’s tree toads<\/p>\n

Hats off to these female toads, then, and a reminder that conservation strategies have to take into account the unique lifeways of vulnerable species if we\u2019re to protect against further extinctions within this remarkable group of amphibians.<\/p>\n

Extinction risks are not the same for amphibians with different reproductive modes and understanding this relationship is critical.<\/p>\n

Christoph Liedtke<\/p>\n

“Effective conservation strategies require understanding the ecology and life history of organisms,” said Liedtke. “Extinction risks<\/a> are not the same for amphibians with different reproductive modes and understanding this relationship is critical.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Viviparous amphibians clearly have very specific environmental needs that are directly or indirectly linked to their reproductive modes. As for how the description of these three new species is linked to conservation strategies: We show that distinct lineages inside the broader N. viviparus group are actually highly localized and we need to protect all of these distinct areas if we want to effectively conserve this diversity.”<\/p>\n

The study is published in Vertebrate Zoology<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amphibians like frogs and toads are a great way to observe metamorphosis. They lay eggs that develop into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-275877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}