Our paper about long-term high temperature tolerance of hot spring frogs won 2025 Zoological Science Award

Our paper about long-term high-temperature tolerance of hot spring frogs, titled “Long-Term Heat Tolerance and Accelerated Metamorphosis: Hot Spring Adaptations of Buergeria japonica,” won the 2025 Zoological Science Award (Zoological Society of Japan, Announcement). This work was done with Bagus Priambodo (the first-author of this paper, currently working at Universitas Negeri Malang), who earned his doctorate under my supervision in 2024.

The Zoological Science Award is given to the most highly valuable paper published in the journal Zoological Science last year, and this paper was one of five to be selected.

In this study, long-term heat tolerance experiments were carried out in different temperature environments on tadpoles of the Ryukyu Kajika Frog, B. japonica, known as the hot spring frog, and several other species in the same genus. The results showed that B. japonica had higher heat tolerance than other species in the genus, and the population from Seramma Hot Spring in particular showed a high survival rate and accelerated development rate. However, they were unable to survive to the end of metamorphosis at temperatures above 35 celsius degree. It was also shown that the preference for high temperatures decreased as development progressed, suggesting that high-temperature tolerance may actually be limited to a certain period during development. This research provided new insight into the high-temperature adaptation of hot spring frogs and was highly praised.

Priambodo B, Shiraga K, Harada I, Ogino H, *Igawa T, Long-term heat tolerance and accelerated metamorphosis: Hot spring adaptations of Buergeria japonica. Zoological Science 41: 424-429 June 2024. [ DOI | http | PDF ]