How were your Ambystoma this year? plus belly patterns

Hi Folks,

I would be curious to hear about your impressions of adult Ambystoma numbers at breeding sites this year, especially if you've been following populations for multiple years.

I have been estimating population size in a group of smallmouth + hybrid salamanders in Northeast Ohio since 2011. There was a noticeable drop in the number of adults in all of our ponds this year. I don't know if this was due to adult mortality or just individuals skipping breeding for a year, but we may be able to sort that out from recapture data in future years.

Population fluctuations are very common in amphibians and can be caused by all sorts of factors. But I've heard from a number of people across the midwest / northeast who have been closely tracking Ambystoma populations, and nearly all of them have reported drops in adult abundance this year.

Did you see any drops in numbers of breeding salamanders? Increases? No change? Please share your observations.

Thanks for sharing!

Mike

PS: we've started a pilot project to determine if we can use belly spot patterns to identify individuals from year to year. Below is a picture showing some salamander bellies - I've found the variation to be really fantastic! I may try to put together a little 'quiz' for people to try their skills on matching individuals caught at different times.

Really cool! I was only out for the tail end of migrations this year so I can't give a good estimate on how many were out. I did find a ton of Pseudotrioton, many more than previous years. We've been taking pictures of A. maculatum spots trying to quantify the variation and see if there is anything to that.

Hi Jaster, thanks for the info, glad to hear the Pseudotriton in your area are doing well.

Are you also using A. maculatum spots for individual identification, or for investigating habitat disturbance like in Wright and Zamudio's 2002 paper?

mikebenard said:

.... PS: we've started a pilot project to determine if we can use belly spot patterns to identify individuals from year to year. Below is a picture showing some salamander bellies - I've found the variation to be really fantastic! I may try to put together a little 'quiz' for people to try their skills on matching individuals caught at different times.

Click to expand...

I'm unsure about these animals but with regard to eastern tiger salamanders, their spot shapes, colors and belly patterns can change significantly as they age. Over a decade for example, a young eastern tiger can start off black with bright yellow spots and then as it ages, the animal can turn olive with brown blotches ... and I've seen the belly patterns and colors change as well.

I think the idea behind it was to gauge if individual fitness was tied in with coloration of the spots. I'll ask and see if anything has been published, we've been collecting data for at least three years doing this. That is also the time I have been out of school, and thus out of the loop! Thanks for the link for that paper, pretty interesting. My friend may further his graduate research and look into a hellbender site where some road construction is being planned. Don't know the specs on that either.


Always glad to help!

Hi Jan, thanks for your feedback. That is one of the issues I am concerned about. Pattern matching methods are getting increased attention in ecological studies, and they would be great compared to more invasive methods. But there are also a few papers describing these pattern shifts you mentioned. So hopefully our pilot study will let us know about the usefulness of this method for this species. By the way, if you have photos of salamander pattern changes over years, I would be very interested in seeing them.

Hi jaster, sounds like very interesting stuff, good luck!

mikebenard said:

Hi Jan, thanks for your feedback. That is one of the issues I am concerned about. Pattern matching methods are getting increased attention in ecological studies, and they would be great compared to more invasive methods. But there are also a few papers describing these pattern shifts you mentioned. So hopefully our pilot study will let us know about the usefulness of this method for this species. By the way, if you have photos of salamander pattern changes over years, I would be very interested in seeing them.

Hi jaster, sounds like very interesting stuff, good luck!

Click to expand...

Hi Mike,
The color and pattern changes I mention are based on my casual observations of A. tigrinum over the years that I have been keeping the species (off and on for 50 years). I am a hobbyist not a researcher. Serendipitously however, I do have a few photos that serve as an example.

The first photo was taken in early 2006 - showing my eldest and youngest tiger. The one on the bottom was my youngest - I had had him about 1 year when the photo was taken, he was ~7.5inches in length. The second photo taken in 2011 for a Caudata Culture article is this same animal at 12+ inches in length - notice how the round gold spots on black color had changed to olive splotches on dark brown. The last photo was taken today (2014) notice how the pattern has changed yet again and has become very reticulated.

I do not have any photos of belly patterns yet I have noticed pattern changes there as well. At different life stages, more yellow with spots and then more reticulated patterns developing later in life.

The other animal pictured in the first photo was about 6 years old when the shot was taken. As a first year morph, it was solid black with bright gold well-defined spots - by year 6 he had turned brown with olive splotches.

I live in NW side of Chicago land area. I have been going to a retention pond that back in 2010 and 2011 were swimming in mega Eastern Tiger Salamanders.
2013- year after major drought (previous summer) the numbers were down, but still good.
2014 -#3 snowiest winter & #1 COLDEST winter, numbers are the lowest i have ever seen.

I plan to check out this area during the holiday weekend. Hopefully, there will be newbies swimming around.

JAN: My wife named one of my salamanders LUCKY as it had yellow blotches that were equal to an " L "

ron1fritsch said:

JAN: My wife named one of my salamanders LUCKY as it had yellow blotches that were equal to an " L "

Click to expand...

I named this animal Lucky as his habitat was being
destroyed, he came out of an animal's borrow and was rescued...

Hi Jan,

Thanks a lot for showing the pictures, they are really compelling and raise some serious questions about the use of pattern matching for long-term studies of amphibians. This is one of those areas where hobbyists can provide really valuable information to professional researchers. Most of the researchers who study these animals in nature don't keep them as long term captives, and so aren't able to test for color pattern changes like this.

I'm a subject editor for the journal Herpetological Review (Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles). This is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes short papers on natural history and scientific techniques for reptiles and amphibians. I think your photos would make an interesting contribution as a short natural history note in the journal. As a scientific journal, Herp Review doesn't pay authors (but also doesn't have page changes), but it would be a chance to share your photos with another community. If you would be interested in publishing them in Herp Review, please send me an email (mfbenard {at} gmail . com).

Hi Ron,

Thanks a lot, that is very helpful. You are the first person I've heard from in the Chicago area, and it is interesting that you've seen a similar pattern there as in Michigan, Ohio, and PA.

Mike
Thanks and I will follow-up with you via email.

To see if other long-term terrestrial ambystomatid keepers have observed spot, color or pattern changes in aging animals, I have created these two threads seeking their input:

http://www.caudata.org/forum/f1173-...num-mavortium-color-spot-pattern-changes.html

http://www.caudata.org/forum/f1173-...ambystomatids-color-spot-pattern-changes.html

I have been monitoring two spots here in Western MA for around 5 or 6 years. I also noticed this year that there seemed to be less A. maculatum and fewer as well as smaller egg masses in both areas, than found in previous years.

Hi deliriah, thanks that is interesting stuff, especially about the smaller number of egg masses. I haven't checked our measurements of adults to see if they differed in size between this year and previous years. Have you been recording counts of egg masses in a standardized way over the years?

Hi Jan, Glad you are interested! No hurry, but please do send me a message when you get a chance. I didn't see any posts on the new threads you made, but let me know if anyone contacts you.

Thanks, Mike

I have to say that there are some very interesting photos above, but on the Ambystoma front, I could not find any during migration season this year despite multiple searches.