You Can't Kill Frog and Roll

It's been a while since I last posted an update, it's been slow given the recent pandemic of coronavirus but progress is being made behind the scenes. First of all, you will notice that there is a new map! We've confirmed the presence of a new population in Dinnington, South Yorkshire. More good news comes as we've got permission to visit a number of new addresses, some of which are in Luton and High Wycombe which allows us to tick them off of the list. This of course depends on both licences and the current coronavirus pandemic. On a more positive note, we have the correct licence from Natural England to conduct data collection in the Worksop cluster where we are yet to sample. Again, this will have to wait until the pandemic has been brought under control but we're ready to pounce when it does.

 

The updated map for April showing where we are currently at, let's hope we can sample as many of the remaining populations as possible despite the trying times we currently find ourselves in

In our last update, I spoke a little about sending off our sequence data. Well, that has now arrived back and we've completed some preliminary analysis and had some interesting results. We're still not certain what they mean as we haven't been able to fully sit down and probe them further due to coronavirus having knock-on effects with other projects and commitments etc. However it is something we aim to look at soon and we hope the remaining samples (that are still be collected) are able to help complete the picture. Who knows with the lockdown we may even have a chance to start drafting the introduction and methods for the manuscript.

 

What everybody came here for, another herpetological pun

As always we're continuing to keep our ears to the ground in case there is any news of additional midwife toad populations we can sample! For now, take care all and stay safe!