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Our Roving Correspondent
BIRMINGHAM NEWS (Alabama) 23 August 09 Alabama among the best places to study salamanders (Thomas Spencer)
On a summer afternoon under a canopy of hemlock trees, Leslie Rissler is hunting salamanders in a fern-rich ravine along Clear Creek in the Bankhead National Forest.
If as a child you spent time searching for salamanders and crayfish in Alabama creeks, you are probably feeling a twinge of jealousy at the thought that you could still be doing it as a grown-up, a grown-up with advanced degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of California at Berkeley, a grown-up professor at the University of Alabama and curator of herpetology.
It turns out that this is important work. And Alabama happens to be one of the best places in the world to do it. There are more species of salamanders in the southern Appalachians than in any other temperate region.
And salamanders - slimy, secretive and silent - happen to be key components of the ecosystem. They are found where it is moist: in rotting logs and leaf litter, in muddy bogs and clear springs, creeks and rivers. They are in the crevices of cliffs and caves and in the mist zones of waterfalls.
They are abundant: The total mass of the salamanders in the southern Appalachians exceeds the poundage of any other predator.
You may think of black bears as the top of the forest food chain, but salamanders are actually the dominant vertebrate predators in forests. Scientists estimate there is one salamander per meter in the southern Appalachians.
They dine on insects, and, in turn, birds, mammals, snakes, fish, turtles, frogs and crayfish dine on them.
"They eat whatever they can fit in their mouth," Rissler said. "Salamanders are really important to a healthy forest. A lot of things eat them, and that allows energy to move up the food chain.
"And they are extremely sensitive to environmental changes, so we can monitor their populations and judge the general health of natural areas."
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/statebriefs.ssf?/base/news/1251015351174990.xml&coll=2
On a summer afternoon under a canopy of hemlock trees, Leslie Rissler is hunting salamanders in a fern-rich ravine along Clear Creek in the Bankhead National Forest.
If as a child you spent time searching for salamanders and crayfish in Alabama creeks, you are probably feeling a twinge of jealousy at the thought that you could still be doing it as a grown-up, a grown-up with advanced degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of California at Berkeley, a grown-up professor at the University of Alabama and curator of herpetology.
It turns out that this is important work. And Alabama happens to be one of the best places in the world to do it. There are more species of salamanders in the southern Appalachians than in any other temperate region.
And salamanders - slimy, secretive and silent - happen to be key components of the ecosystem. They are found where it is moist: in rotting logs and leaf litter, in muddy bogs and clear springs, creeks and rivers. They are in the crevices of cliffs and caves and in the mist zones of waterfalls.
They are abundant: The total mass of the salamanders in the southern Appalachians exceeds the poundage of any other predator.
You may think of black bears as the top of the forest food chain, but salamanders are actually the dominant vertebrate predators in forests. Scientists estimate there is one salamander per meter in the southern Appalachians.
They dine on insects, and, in turn, birds, mammals, snakes, fish, turtles, frogs and crayfish dine on them.
"They eat whatever they can fit in their mouth," Rissler said. "Salamanders are really important to a healthy forest. A lot of things eat them, and that allows energy to move up the food chain.
"And they are extremely sensitive to environmental changes, so we can monitor their populations and judge the general health of natural areas."
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/statebriefs.ssf?/base/news/1251015351174990.xml&coll=2