Early onset of breeding season in the green toad Bufotes viridis in Western Poland

By

Kaczmarski, Mikołaj
Szala, Klaudia
Kloskowski, Janusz

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2019-5-22

Original Publication

Subterranean Biology

Volume

32

Pages

109--112

Subjects

Amphibia , Anura , climate change , Global warming , Phenology , Poznan

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/herpetozoa.32.e35825

 

Abstract

Amphibians are highly sensitive to environmental changes such as climate warming. Here, we report unusually early oviposition in two spatially isolated urban subpopulations of the green toad Bufotesviridis Laurenti, 1768, in Poznań, Western Poland. To our knowledge, we report the earliest breeding date for Central and Eastern Europe, for areas of similar latitude. We ascribe the early onset of B.viridis reproduction to an exceptionally warm spring in Western Poland in 2017. B.viridis shows flexibility in the timing of reproductive activity, however, shifts in breeding phenology may have both beneficial and detrimental population consequences.