A recent article by Ruth Schuster in Haaretz titled “Syrian Spadefoot Toad Rediscovered in Syria – Thanks to Facebook” caught my eye because I am familiar with the animal mentioned. However, when I read more, I was disappointed to find politics intruding in science.
Frogs and toads are anurans or tailless amphibians. They represent more than 80% of the 8,000 known amphibian species. Amphibians are cold-blooded vertebrates that live part of their lives in water and part in air. As Schuster notes, amphibians are sensitive to pollution and climate change and therefore the population status of this group is an important indicator of the health of the world we live in. As much as 40% of all amphibian species are at risk of extinction (David B. Wake and Michelle S. Koo, Current Biology, 2018).
Schuster’s article is based on a scientific paper published in the journal Herpetological Conservation and Biology in December 2024. The title “Community science rediscovers the Syrian Spadefoot Toad, Pelobatus syriacus, in war-torn regions of Syria” is a good précis of the article. The authors, Yaman Omran (University of Aleppo), Johnny Baakliny, and Mark A. Davis (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) note that while the range for the toad is believed to extend from the Caucasus to the Middle East, evidence as to its presence in Syria is very limited. Moreover, efforts to monitor biodiversity would be difficult in a war-torn country.
The investigators enlisted the help of a large Facebook group consisting of almost 40,000 Syrian wildlife hobbyists to search for evidence of the existence to the spadefoot toad in Syria. This was the primary focus of the article and it resulted in three definite discoveries in western regions of Syria.
My encounter with Pelobatus goes back to the summer of 1982.
I was young Canadian scientist working with Israeli scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. One of my interests was the effect of evolution from water to air on the optical characteristics of the vertebrate eye. An eye in air consists of two optical components, the cornea, an outer transparent layer of tissue, and the crystalline lens located inside the eye. In water, the light-focusing contribution of the cornea is essentially zero and only the lens focuses light. Essentially, an eye adapted for vision in water would have to contend with the focusing contribution of the cornea if exposed to air; and vice versa for an eye adapted optically for seeing in air, if placed in water.
The study we carried out (my collaborator was the late Professor Emeritus Michael Warburg, of the Faculty of Biology, a widely recognized amphibian expert) examined the anatomy and optical characteristics the eyes at various stages of Pelobatus metamorphosis. We monitored how the eye changed from one suited for vision in water to one appropriate for vison in air (Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 1983).
What the article on the Syrian spadefoot toad did wrong
With regard to the article described in Haaretz, the Pelobatus tadpoles studied in our research were from a pond in Israel [where the toad is known as hafarit metzuya] located on Kibbutz Sasa in the Galilee, close to the border with Lebanon. This should not be a surprise. Animals occurring in the wild are not aware of national boundaries, so it is no surprise that Pelobatus may also be found in Israel.
However, there is a problem. The article in the journal written by Omran and his two American collaborators acknowledges, in figure captions and text, that Pelobatus has been reported in Israel, but Israel is referred to as “the occupied Palestinian territories.”
Did the author of the Haaretz piece simply read the article about Pelobatus’ quickly and miss this? I find it hard to believe that she would consider Israel to be “occupied Palestinian territory,” but maybe I am wrong.
I was also surprised that Schuster referred the journal that published the Pelobatus article to be a ‘prestigious journal’. It is not.
Herpetological Conservation and Biology was founded in 2006 because, as the journal website notes, most academic journals did not publish material that was descriptive and natural-history-oriented. The impact factor, the frequency with which a typical article in an academic journal is referred to in a given year, is a measure of its importance. While it is still relatively new, the impact factor for Herpetological Conservation and Biology is low, less than one.
Schuster’s article is an upbeat one that draws attention to the article by Omran et al. as a sign of hope and renewal in a very troubled part of the world.
It is certainly reasonable to hope for better days after 13 years of violent civil war in Syria. However, the toxic mixture of science and politics in the article she cites is not a harbinger of better times. Rather, it is an example of the use of science to promote enmity among nations.
The writer is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.