Individual monitoring was initiated in 1989 by Jean Clobert and Manuel Massot, on the 2 populations at the top of Mont-Lozère. The initial work focused on the dispersal of individuals within the populations, before rapidly extending to population dynamics and more general questions of evolutionary ecology. From 2000 onwards, under Murielle Richard’s initiative, systematic genotyping of individuals made it possible to reconstruct kinship links between individuals.
The project then welcomed two American researchers, Barry Sinervo and Donald Miles, and expanded to include the 20 additional populations monitored every 2 years in different environments and at different altitudes in the Massif Central. The work then focused strongly on the response of the populations to climate change, which is marked in this geographical area.
Pierre de Villemereuil took over responsibility for the survey in 2021, adding a more genetic and evolutionary dimension.