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What is the context of this research?

Midwife toads are a non-native species in the UK. We don't know how many colonies exist. The assumption today is that the first established population, the Bedford population, acted as a source population for other colonies. A recent discovery shows that the Cambridge population is of Spanish origin (with the Bedford toads being of French origin). We hypothesise that other populations have different introduction pathways. For a century, the literature stated the Bedford midwife toads are of French origin, yet this has not been verified this with genetics. We will extract and sequence DNA from the Bedford population and others to check if these toads are of French origin. Though, the results may show results that could over turn a century of scientific assumption.

What is the significance of this project?

We intend to produce a partial, if not complete, haplotype map of the UK's midwife toad populations. These data will allow us to identify populations where midwife toads have been used to found new populations, such as the Bedford population. Our expectation is not all of the introductions will be independent of one another. We expect some populations to be scarcely documented with their origins completely unknown. We will publish the data we produce in an open access journal and all DNA sequences will be uploaded to GenBank and made freely available to anyone to use for future analysis.

What are the goals of the project?

The project aims to collect mitochondrial DNA using non-invasive techniques from populations of the introduced midwife toad (A. obstetricans) throughout the UK. These samples will then be sent to a colleague’s lab (Rob Gandola, University College Dublin) where the DNA will be extracted before being sent off to be sequenced. Due to the likelihood of a small number of founding individuals and the cryptic nature of the toads, between 5 and 10 individuals will be sampled per population. We aim to validate whether or not the Bedford population originated from France as well as identifying the introduction pathway of the midwife toad populations we are able to take samples from.