wes_von_papineäu
Our Roving Correspondent
NEWS ADVERTISER (Ajax, Ontario) 01 Ontario 09 Wet summer benefits Ontario's salamanders
The good news: although brutal on butterflies and many birds, two wet summers in a row have been beneficial for some residents of southern Ontario ecosystems. Ones that like to stay moist and inhabit soggy places. Ones that breed in wet woods with shallow pools. Binge feeders that get out and about in rainy weather, storing up fat for dry times ahead.
We're talking salamanders.
I suspect many Ontarians seldom see salamanders and may not even know they exist. They're silent, small, nocturnal and spend the day under rocks, logs and leaf litter on the forest floor. None of this hopping about catching insects, like their amphibian cousins, frogs and toads. Salamanders are slim and streamlined, built for burrowing.
Which isn't to say they're insignificant! I've heard tell they make up more of the biomass than any other animals in an Ontario woods. And play an important role, catching mites, flies, centipedes, spiders, snails, ants and caterpillars with their darting tongue.
I see them most often in fall, when my husband and I are drawing wood in the sugar bush. Moving heavy blocks that have been sitting on the ground since spring, we'll often uncover a salamander or two. They're territorial, protecting their feeding range with scent markers.
Six- to twelve-centimetres long, the glossy creatures often sit motionless for a while, wondering where their damp dark shelter has gone, then wriggle off under the leaves and moss. We're always careful to cover them up with pieces of bark to keep them from the sun.
Redbacked salamanders, the species most abundant in our sugar bush, are usually slaty grey with an orangey-red stripe down their back from head to tail. The "leadback" colour morph is blackish grey. They're entirely terrestrial, not needing ponds to mate or lay their eggs in. Instead, the mother redback lays her eggs in a burrow, curling her body around them for protection and carefully turning them to avoid mould problems.
Yellow-spotted and blue-spotted salamanders, the next most common, need shallow ponds to breed in. On the night of the first warm rain in spring, they all head back to the exact same pool where they were born, an amazing migration to witness.
Amphibians were the first creatures to crawl up on land, around 150 million years ago. Most salamanders have two pairs of legs, like lizards, but they didn't make the evolutionary transition to a dry habitat that reptiles did. Some have lungs, others breathe through their skin. The babies have feathery gills that are re-absorbed when they become adults.
Southern Ontario was once blanketed with forests and populated with salamanders. But as soon as a patch of woods is cleared, the salamanders vanish. One more reason to treasure and protect our precious legacy of woodlands.
newsdurhamregion.com | Wet summer benefits Ontario's salamanders
The good news: although brutal on butterflies and many birds, two wet summers in a row have been beneficial for some residents of southern Ontario ecosystems. Ones that like to stay moist and inhabit soggy places. Ones that breed in wet woods with shallow pools. Binge feeders that get out and about in rainy weather, storing up fat for dry times ahead.
We're talking salamanders.
I suspect many Ontarians seldom see salamanders and may not even know they exist. They're silent, small, nocturnal and spend the day under rocks, logs and leaf litter on the forest floor. None of this hopping about catching insects, like their amphibian cousins, frogs and toads. Salamanders are slim and streamlined, built for burrowing.
Which isn't to say they're insignificant! I've heard tell they make up more of the biomass than any other animals in an Ontario woods. And play an important role, catching mites, flies, centipedes, spiders, snails, ants and caterpillars with their darting tongue.
I see them most often in fall, when my husband and I are drawing wood in the sugar bush. Moving heavy blocks that have been sitting on the ground since spring, we'll often uncover a salamander or two. They're territorial, protecting their feeding range with scent markers.
Six- to twelve-centimetres long, the glossy creatures often sit motionless for a while, wondering where their damp dark shelter has gone, then wriggle off under the leaves and moss. We're always careful to cover them up with pieces of bark to keep them from the sun.
Redbacked salamanders, the species most abundant in our sugar bush, are usually slaty grey with an orangey-red stripe down their back from head to tail. The "leadback" colour morph is blackish grey. They're entirely terrestrial, not needing ponds to mate or lay their eggs in. Instead, the mother redback lays her eggs in a burrow, curling her body around them for protection and carefully turning them to avoid mould problems.
Yellow-spotted and blue-spotted salamanders, the next most common, need shallow ponds to breed in. On the night of the first warm rain in spring, they all head back to the exact same pool where they were born, an amazing migration to witness.
Amphibians were the first creatures to crawl up on land, around 150 million years ago. Most salamanders have two pairs of legs, like lizards, but they didn't make the evolutionary transition to a dry habitat that reptiles did. Some have lungs, others breathe through their skin. The babies have feathery gills that are re-absorbed when they become adults.
Southern Ontario was once blanketed with forests and populated with salamanders. But as soon as a patch of woods is cleared, the salamanders vanish. One more reason to treasure and protect our precious legacy of woodlands.
newsdurhamregion.com | Wet summer benefits Ontario's salamanders