It has been 30 years since the disaster at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant. To this day, radiation does not allow humans to live there, but there are other living beings there who have no reason to complain.
In Chernobyl, “it remains difficult to determine whether current radiation levels have the potential to shape ecology and the evolution of wild populations in contaminated areas”, begins by explaining what was published this Thursday in Biology Letters.
Now, researchers have discovered that eastern tree frogs (Hyla of the east) that live in and around the Chernobyl area have only psmall differences compared to others in terms of health markers.
Scientists collected 256 male frogs from ponds in and near the area from 2016 to 2018. 197 of them, whose ages could be determined more accurately, were studied in detail, he explains.
The levels of a stress hormone called corticosterona and the length of your telomeres — DNA chains present at the end of chromosomes, which help protect DNA from degradation.
“Our study suggests that current radiation levels experienced by tree frogs in Chernobyl are not enough to significantly shorten their lifespan and are in line with a previous study carried out on a similar species in radiocontaminated areas around Fukushima”, reads the article.
AThe frogs that live in Chernobyl are therefore in good healthalong with other species that live there — the radiation even gave rise to one, which has melanin that serves as protection: the black frog.
