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Abstract :
[en] Faced with emerging deadly skin diseases, amphibians are currently the most endangered animal class on earth - with 40% of species threatened with extinction. Considering the urgency of the situation, conservation authorities prioritize the establishment of ex-situ survival colonies, to ensure the persistence of the most vulnerable species and provide a possibility for their reintroduction after the mitigation of in-situ threats. Yet, while a lot of ex-situ collections of amphibians have been set around the world in the past decades, less than 12% of them have led to successfully established, self-sustaining, populations in the wild. A major challenge for these captive programs is to maintain evolutionary integrity, and research on how amphibians adapt to captivity is therefore crucial to increase the success of our conservation efforts.
In this context, we set up an ex-situ collection of European newts and monitored their adaptation to long-term captivity employing a combination of behavioral and molecular tools. This new, multidisciplinary, approach enabled us to establish the first comprehensive personality study of an amphibian model, to describe the long-term reorganization of the amphibian skin microbiome (their first line of defense against pathogens) in captivity, and to investigate the interaction between host behavior and the composition of skin bacteria communities.
This original framework could be used to evaluate and select the most appropriate individuals ahead of reintroductions, and ultimately enhance amphibian conservation programs.
