Baby Salamander Hunt, Part 2: Plus Another Adventure to the Balaban Natural History Library

In our last edition of the baby salamander saga, (yes it was a while ago, many higher priorities got in the way of my writing), 10 baby salamanders were discovered at Somme Woods. This time I went out on August 25th and found 1 juvenile and 3 adults near Ash Pond.* Ash Pond is one of the ephemeral pools I was most worried about at Somme Woods. It's deep in the buckthorn thicket, the ground is bare, a ring of magnificent white and swamp white oaks surround it - their tired and broken lower branches tell us the story of their dark and lonely recent history. At first glance, the pool looks very shallow, and on June 24, 2015 it was all but dried up. That seemed pretty early to me, and when I learned that baby salamanders often don't come out of the pools until mid-August, I feared they were toast.

Juvenile salamander, 35mm stv, Aug 25, 2015

I looked under a lot, but not all of the logs around Ash Pond. In fact the first log I looked under was home to a baby salamander 35 mm snout-to-vent, squirmy, and with fresh looking cool blue spots. 3 of its adult cousins rested under nearby logs. One surprised me with its absent front right leg. It seems this was a birth defect since no evidence of an injury was present.

Salamander with missing leg, Aug 25, 2015

Nearby Ash Pond in the wet woods, along an ephemeral stream, is an area being rescued from buckthorn by a hearty and full-of-heart band of gentlemen who regularly pass up the delicate work of seed collecting on summer workdays, and charge into the woods, chainsaws in hand. In this area of heavy recent work, many salamanders can be found - likely an extension of the Ash Pond salamander habitat and the perfect starting point for our monitoring efforts next year. Many thanks to that team for helping the salamanders by opening up their home so more bug producing, erosion fighting plants can grow.

For now, I'm satisfied that salamanders at Somme are reproducing. It will be very interesting to learn more about the health of the population over the next few years as we ramp up our monitoring efforts and do more research about blue spotted salamander habits and habitat requirements.

But wait there's more!

On September 9th I took another trip to Jane and John Balaban's home library. There in their volumes about salamanders, I found another couple tidbits of information that will inform our future efforts and help us reflect on our 2015 work. According to The Handbook of Salamanders by Sherman C Bishop, the time period of blue-spotted salamander transformation from egg, to larvae, to land-dweller is 56 to 125 days. That's a huge range! Vogt had me thinking that sallies were exiting the pools in early August, but Bishop may have just made that much more hazy. In March to Early April salamanders court and mate for 2 days to 3 weeks after they emerge from their winter burrows and before they lay eggs. So that got me thinking...

...It's time for some Salamander Math!

Image from www.2nd-grade-math-salamanders.com

Problem: If Somme Woods salamanders were first recorded emerging from their winter burrows on March 17 and last recorded on April 2nd, when would we expect to see the babies emerge from the ephemeral pools?

Definition of terms:
- Migration Day One (MDO) = First date we found salamanders emerging from winter burrows
- Migration Day Last (MDL) = Last date we found salamanders emerging from winter burrows
- Courtship and mating period (CMP) = the range of time salamanders are out of their burrows and are currently preparing to and actively engaging in mating and laying eggs
- Transformation period (TP) = The time it takes for baby salamanders to change from an egg to a land dweler
- Baby Day One (BDO) = The first day we would expect to see baby salamanders come out of the ephemeral pools
- Baby Day Last (BDL) = The last day we would expect to see baby salamanders come out of the ephemeral pools

Equations:
MDO + Shortest CMP (2 days) + shortest TP (56 days) = BDO
MDL + Longest CMP  (21 days) + longest TP (125 days) = BDL

Solution:
March 17 + 2 days + 56 days = May 14th
April 2nd + 21 days + 125 days = August 26th

Plain Terms Answer:
May 14th is the earliest we could expect to see baby salamanders finish their transformation from aquatic to terrestrial and come out of the pools, and August 26th is the latest. Again, that's a huge range!

The date of transformation could be any time from mid May to late August, but at Somme many of the ephemeral pools dry up anywhere from Late May to Late July. Blue-spotted salamanders are known to adjust their rate of transformation based on the conditions of the ephemeral pool. If they have a lot of water to hang out in, they may stay in their aquatic larval stage for longer, but if the pool dries up rapidly, they can respond and transform to to their juvenile terrestrial form more quickly.

Even though there is such a huge range for when baby salamanders can emerge from their breeding pools, this is very good information to have at the ready for next year. We will have a much better understanding of when salamanders come out of the pools so we can go look for them (I really want to see those yellow spots y'all!). We will also be able to use this information along with data we collect on when the ponds become wet and dry up to monitor the habitat quality for these guys.

Right now salamanders are snuggled up together in their winter burrows awaiting the spring. We will check back in with them in early March, so stay tuned!

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*Ash pond has been the working title of a Somme Woods East pool, though a certain steward, and perhaps others, aren't big fans of the name. A renaming is most certainly forthcoming.

Baby Salamander Hunt, Part 1

We have baby salamanders!! A small group of tired and bug-bitten, but determined salamander hunters went out this afternoon to search around a few ephemeral pools for baby salamanders. We found 10 salamanders in 1 hour in a small area recently cleared of buckthorn. That was a total surprise in itself! All of them were very small, but none had yellow spots. While we scratched our heads about that, we also found a crude way of measuring their length - the best way, it seems, other than color to determine their age. In typical Cecil style, I forgot my ruler, so we laid them out on notebook paper, put a pen down for comparison, then I worked out their approximate measurements at home.

Itty bitty baby salamander. Approximately 30 mm. Found 8/16/15.

The range of snout-to-vent lengths was approximately 27 to 35 mm, with a mean of 31.1 mm. Vogt said in his book that the snout-to-vent length of juvenile salamanders that just emerged from the ephemeral pool ranged from 24 to 38 mm. So to me, it seems these are definitely baby salamanders. That also means that blue-spotted salamanders at Somme Woods are procreating, even in some of the buckthorniest places!

My biggest questions right now are: What's up with the yellow spots? Did we just miss the two-week window to see them? Why didn't the tiny salamanders I found in June have yellow spots? Are blue-spotted salamanders all over Somme Woods reproducing successfully, or did we just get lucky and find a big patch of juvenile salamanders?

More to come in Baby Salamander Hunt, part 2...

Cecil inspects a baby salamander for yellow spots. Photo Credit: Lisa Youngberg

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To find out more about the contents of this article or how to become a habitat restoration superhero, contact Cecil Hynds-Riddle at cecilhyndsriddle@gmail.com.

What Does a Baby Blue-Spotted Salamander Look Like Anyway?

[Photo credit: Lisa Culp]

        A few weeks back a big group from the Shedd Aquarium and some of the most enthusiastic amphibian-lovers around came out to take a look at the health of a few of the Somme Woods’ ephemeral pools. Ephemeral pools are small to medium water bodies that form in low areas from melted snow and spring rains then typically dry up sometime during the summer – thus their ephemeralness. They provide unique habitat for amphibians particularly because they are fishless. Permanent water bodies inevitably become inhabited by fish who love to eat salamander and frog eggs. Some amphibian species reproduce just fine in fishy pools, but others, such as the blue-spotted salamander, do not. Ephemeral pools are some of the most threatened habitat around, and Somme Woods is home to 14 of them as well as a healthy population of chorus frogs and spring peepers – other ephemeral pool-dependent species. 

        As we explored some ephemeral pools in late June we noticed just how shallow they had become. You see, as buckthorn takes over an area it shades out the lovely understory including sedges, forbs, native shrubs, and other erosion-controlling plants. This means that dirt and leaves wash straight into the pools and quite quickly can snuff them out all together. Currently at Somme Woods this is happening to many of our ephemeral pools – some of which are nearly filled in with mucky mud. Even so, a quick log-flipping expedition will show that salamanders can still be found around these erosion-sabotaged pools. But as I’ve flipped logs this year and admired the ethereal blue, constellation-like bodies of these little creatures, I began to wonder, “What does a baby salamander look like anyway… none of these look very babyish.” Then when one of the Shedd aquarium animal caretakers informed me that blue-spotted salamanders typically live about 10 years, something terrifying clicked in my mind – What if our Somme Woods salamanders aren’t reproducing? If the water quality and food supply in these shallow pools has degraded extensively enough it is quite possible that the adult salamanders follow their spring ritual each year to no avail. I imagined the sweet creatures pulling themselves up out of their winter burrows, migrating across the frosty early-spring leaf litter, mating, laying eggs in the shallow, murky pool that once held a great bounty of bugs to eat and oxygen producing plants, and then snoozing under a log for the remainder of the summer, only to have their precious eggs whither and their few hatched offspring snuff out like the pool they were born in. If it’s true, what a sad and preventable thing to have happen! 

Shedd Aquarium staff attempt to take water quality readings from an almost dried up ephemeral pool, surrounded by a buckthorn thicket. Little other plant or invertebrate life present. June 24, 2015 

        My grim daydream has haunted me since, but I was beginning to think that this year it would be impossible to know if blue-spotted salamanders are reproducing or not. That is, until yesterday. I was at the home of long-time stewards Jane and John Balaban and I began perusing their extensive natural history library. I encountered a book, “Natural History of Amphibians and Reptiles of Wisconsin” by Richard Carl Vogt.  In which on page 42 it says: 

         “ [Blue-spotted salamanders] transform in mid- to late 

          August. Drying of the pond hastens transformation. The 

          newly transformed salamanders, 24-38 mm in snout-to-vent 

          length, look exactly like the adults except that they have 

          yellow flecks where the adults normally have blue. Within               

          2 weeks the color transformation takes place.” 

John and Jane Balaban hold “Natural History of Amphibians and Reptiles of Wisconsin.” August 13, 2015

        I was totally taken aback. “Yellow flecks!” “Mid- to late August!” This means that the young adult salamanders of Somme Woods are likely emerging from their natal pools as we speak, and it is immensely simple to tell them apart from their adult counterparts – so long as we find them within the correct two-week period. Perhaps they’re there right now, sitting under duffy logs, spotted yellow and waiting for us to search them out. Or did most of the pools dry up too quickly for them to transform from their fully aquatic to terrestrial form? I suppose you’ll have to join me soon on a baby salamander hunt to check it out!

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To find out more about the contents of this article or how to become a habitat restoration superhero, contact Cecil Hynds-Riddle at cecilhyndsriddle@gmail.com.

Welcome!

Hello there and welcome to the Woods and Prairie Foundation blog! Many of the posts will be written by me- Cecil Hynds-Riddle, a habitat restoration enthusiast, salamander lover, sedge head, nature freak, and community organizer. Here you will find musings, queries, observations, and misadventures from the wilderness. I hope you enjoy!