Ischia is the only one of the islands in the Gulf of Naples where the little Emerald Toad livecalled like this because of the spots of an intense emerald color on the body and on the legs.
From the first spring warmths to late summer, the toads use water courses and ponds, of both gentle and brackish water, as reproduction sites. Usually the same where the adults were born. There the encounters between males and females take place, laying thousands of eggs in blackish necklaces on the bottom of the pools.
The tadpoles emerge from the eggs, which take a couple of months to get to the final stage of methamorphosis from aquatic animals with gills into terrestrial animals; which breathe through their lungs and out of the water. Hidden during the day under the leaves, betwen the bark of trees or even under the ground, at a few centimeters deep. They go out at dusk to feed themselves and to signal their characteristic signs of love.
A real song that envelops the humid places, the house of the emerald toad, in different parts of the island. And especially the Mirtina Pine forest; in the centre on the way that leads to Ischia Ponte ; which has become the main site of life and reproduction of the Emerald Toad, among the species at risk protected by the Bern Convention and by the European Habitat Directive.
