A team of researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) has uncovered how a common color variation in frogs has helped them thrive and diversify for millions of years.
Many frogs and toads (anurans) appear in either green or brown-to-grey forms, a camouflage that helps them hide from predators. This “cryptic color variation” is widespread in nature, but scientists have long debated how it persists across long periods of evolutionary time and what role it plays in evolution.
The NYUAD team, led by Research Associate Sandra Goutte and Professor of Biology Stéphane Boissinot, examined data from 2,363 species of frogs and toads. Their analysis shows that these color variations are not short-lived quirks of nature but can last over vast evolutionary timescales. The presence of both green and brown morphs is also linked to the rise of new species and the ability of frogs to adapt to new environments.
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers also studied African grass frogs (Ptychadena) and discovered that the genetic variants responsible for the green and brown morphs have been maintained for over 8 million years in this group. This is one of the rarest documented cases of “ultra-long-term balancing selection,” a genetic process that preserves variation within species across multiple evolutionary splits.
“This study shows how something as simple as color can have a profound impact on survival and biodiversity,” added co-lead author Stéphane Boissinot.
The findings shed new light on how frogs adapt and evolve, providing broader insights into the processes that maintain diversity in nature.
NYU Abu Dhabi has established more than 90 faculty labs and projects, producing over 9,200 internationally recognized research publications. Times Higher Education ranks NYU among the world’s top 35 universities, making NYUAD the highest globally ranked university in the UAE.