  The isotope yields of fragments, produced in the decay of the quasiprojectile
in Au+Au peripheral collisions at 35 MeV/nucleon and those coming from the
disassembly of the unique source formed in Xe+Cu central reactions at 30
MeV/nucleon, were measured. We show that the relative yields of neutron-rich
isotopes increase with the excitation energy in multifragmentation reaction. In
the framework of the statistical multifragmentation model which fairly well
reproduces the experimental observables, this behaviour can be explained by
increasing N/Z ratio of hot primary fragments, that corresponds to the
statistical evolution of the decay mechanism with the excitation energy: from a
compound-like decay to complete multifragmentation.
