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.