Among those caught on the banks of the Iset and in the ponds of the Kalinovskie cuts, university scientists discovered an unusually colored male marsh frog.
According to the Ural Federal University, the skin of the animal's back was blue with a strip of blue in the middle, although normally this species of amphibians is green in color. Another frog had an extra front right limb. The find belongs to herpetologists of the Department of Biodiversity and Bioecology of the Institute of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (IENiM), UrFU.
“When we were catching animals with a graduate student of the department Andrei Gurvich, we did not notice anything unusual. Later, in the laboratory, it was discovered that this male had a fifth limb,”explained Vladimir Vershinin, professor of the Department of Biodiversity and Bioecology of the Institute of Natural Sciences and Medicine.
According to the professor, such anomalies indicate changes in the genetic structure of populations and impaired development of animals due to pollution of the habitat.
"From the moment of fertilization, the entire period of development of the marsh frog takes place in the external environment, where embryos and then larvae are exposed to the action of natural geochemistry and pollutants (Pollutants)," said Vladimir Vershinin.
The lake frog, the largest amphibian of Eurasia north of the Himalayas, appeared in the Middle Urals relatively recently, since the 60s of the twentieth century. The reason for the appearance of this species here was the accidental ingress of certain individuals into natural reservoirs from fish farms, medical and biological institutions that use frogs in their activities.