A new study has found that frogs and toads die younger in warmer habitats due to accelerated aging. Scientists consider this evidence that cold-blooded animals will face shorter lifespans as climate change heats up the Earth. This is the first time that this form of lab experiment happened in the wild.
The study examined the populations of two species native to western Canada and the U.S. One species was the Columbia spotted frog and the western toad, as well as the European common frog and the common toad. The researchers specifically looked at the increase in mortality with age, which is called “senescence.”
Senescence is used as a way to capture all effects of aging, from a slower reaction time that could make it easier to be captured by predators. The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and said “in the current context of further global temperature increases predicted by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios,”
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