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<u>POCONO RECORD</u> (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania) 18 June 06 In search of elusive green beings
Trudging up the steep slopes, stepping over huge boulders and bending beneath the branches of ancient rhododendrons, we finally reached a massive outcrop of sandstone in this hemlock-hardwood forest of southwestern Pennsylvania's Fayette County. Our guide was wildlife filmmaker Tom Diez, who invited Rick Koval land preservation specialist of the North Branch Land Trust and me to search for our state's rarest amphibian — the green salamander.
The three of us have shared previous ventures like this in Pennsylvania — looking for monstrous hellbenders beneath big rocks in our Allegheny rivers; small mountain earth snakes and queen snakes beneath boulders and stream banks in southwest Pennsylvania; timber rattlesnakes and copperheads among ledges in the Poconos; and hognose snakes along the floodplain of the Delaware River.
But the green salamander, because of its small size, extremely limited range and very dark, hidden habitat, promised to be the most challenging quarry so far.
It wasn't until 1951 that this species was even discovered in Pennsylvania, and it took more than 30 years for more detailed studies to be carried out by biologists. Fayette County remains the only known location where this rare salamander occurs in Pennsylvania, which represents the northernmost site in its geographic range. It lives in similar habitats in the Allegheny and Cumberland mountains, as well as in the Blue Ridge Mountains where North and South Carolina meet.
Naturalist John Serrao can attest to the difficulty of hunting for green salamanders, since they prefer a very limited, hard-to-reach habitat — the narrow, damp, horizontal crevices that occur along the faces of sandstone outcrops, cave walls, escarpments and ravine edges.
What makes this salamander so difficult to find and study is its choice of a very limited, hard-to-reach habitat: the narrow, damp, horizontal crevices that occur along the faces of sandstone outcrops, cave walls, escarpments and ravine edges. The green salamander hides in these ¼- to ¾-inch-high slits all day and emerges at night to climb up and down the rock faces in search of insects.
Not much is known about this amphibian's breeding behavior, either. It's said that males become very territorial during the reproductive season and even physically attack each other aggressively. Females produce a cluster of 10 to 20 sticky eggs and suspend this mass from the roof of their narrow crevices via short mucus strands. They then guard their eggs — without eating anything — for three months before the babies emerge. Like our common Pocono red-backed salamander, there is no aquatic stage for the green salamander. The babies emerge as miniature replicas of their mother and live their whole lifespan on land — a very unusual feature for amphibians.
Squinting into the dark slits of the rocks with the aid of small flashlights, Tom, Rick and I searched for our first green salamander. Giant, cylindrical millipedes slowly and gracefully crawled in and out of the crevices and across the damp sandstone with undulating, wavelike movements of their 200-plus legs. Colonies of long-legged, humpbacked camel crickets hung upside-down in the dark recesses of caves and crevices, twitching their extremely long, thread-like antennae in unison and making the atmosphere appear to vibrate whenever our flashlights illuminated them.
After about a half-hour, I found our first salamander staring back at me from the entrance into the crevice, but it was only a slimy salamander — a black-white spotted species common throughout much of the eastern United States. Then Rick shouted that he found a green salamander, and we scrambled over the rocks and roots and under the rhododendron branches to see it.
Too late. The salamander retreated to the back of its crevice out of view.
Just a couple of minutes later, peering into another dark slit in the sandstone at eye-level, I saw a bulging pair of eyes staring back at me. Carefully scanning the rest of its body with my pen-light, I realized it was my first green salamander, and I called Tom and Rick. This one was not only easy to see but very accommodating in allowing us to photograph it before disappearing into the rock.
About 5 inches long, the green salamander's black body is speckled with lime-green markings that look remarkably like patches of lichens or mosses. This alone makes it very easy to identify — it's our only green salamander.
Furthermore, as an adaptation to its pancake-thin habitat, the body is flattened. The tips of its toes are expanded and squarish almost like those of a gecko as aids in climbing up and down the vertical faces of the damp rocks at night.
We marveled at these unique features as we focused our close-up lenses on its beautiful, sleek body. It was the only one we were privileged to study that day, but we hiked out of the forest very satisfied with our success at finding such a rare denizen "threatened" in Pennsylvania of Penn's Woods.
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060618/NEWS01/606180318
Trudging up the steep slopes, stepping over huge boulders and bending beneath the branches of ancient rhododendrons, we finally reached a massive outcrop of sandstone in this hemlock-hardwood forest of southwestern Pennsylvania's Fayette County. Our guide was wildlife filmmaker Tom Diez, who invited Rick Koval land preservation specialist of the North Branch Land Trust and me to search for our state's rarest amphibian — the green salamander.
The three of us have shared previous ventures like this in Pennsylvania — looking for monstrous hellbenders beneath big rocks in our Allegheny rivers; small mountain earth snakes and queen snakes beneath boulders and stream banks in southwest Pennsylvania; timber rattlesnakes and copperheads among ledges in the Poconos; and hognose snakes along the floodplain of the Delaware River.
But the green salamander, because of its small size, extremely limited range and very dark, hidden habitat, promised to be the most challenging quarry so far.
It wasn't until 1951 that this species was even discovered in Pennsylvania, and it took more than 30 years for more detailed studies to be carried out by biologists. Fayette County remains the only known location where this rare salamander occurs in Pennsylvania, which represents the northernmost site in its geographic range. It lives in similar habitats in the Allegheny and Cumberland mountains, as well as in the Blue Ridge Mountains where North and South Carolina meet.
Naturalist John Serrao can attest to the difficulty of hunting for green salamanders, since they prefer a very limited, hard-to-reach habitat — the narrow, damp, horizontal crevices that occur along the faces of sandstone outcrops, cave walls, escarpments and ravine edges.
What makes this salamander so difficult to find and study is its choice of a very limited, hard-to-reach habitat: the narrow, damp, horizontal crevices that occur along the faces of sandstone outcrops, cave walls, escarpments and ravine edges. The green salamander hides in these ¼- to ¾-inch-high slits all day and emerges at night to climb up and down the rock faces in search of insects.
Not much is known about this amphibian's breeding behavior, either. It's said that males become very territorial during the reproductive season and even physically attack each other aggressively. Females produce a cluster of 10 to 20 sticky eggs and suspend this mass from the roof of their narrow crevices via short mucus strands. They then guard their eggs — without eating anything — for three months before the babies emerge. Like our common Pocono red-backed salamander, there is no aquatic stage for the green salamander. The babies emerge as miniature replicas of their mother and live their whole lifespan on land — a very unusual feature for amphibians.
Squinting into the dark slits of the rocks with the aid of small flashlights, Tom, Rick and I searched for our first green salamander. Giant, cylindrical millipedes slowly and gracefully crawled in and out of the crevices and across the damp sandstone with undulating, wavelike movements of their 200-plus legs. Colonies of long-legged, humpbacked camel crickets hung upside-down in the dark recesses of caves and crevices, twitching their extremely long, thread-like antennae in unison and making the atmosphere appear to vibrate whenever our flashlights illuminated them.
After about a half-hour, I found our first salamander staring back at me from the entrance into the crevice, but it was only a slimy salamander — a black-white spotted species common throughout much of the eastern United States. Then Rick shouted that he found a green salamander, and we scrambled over the rocks and roots and under the rhododendron branches to see it.
Too late. The salamander retreated to the back of its crevice out of view.
Just a couple of minutes later, peering into another dark slit in the sandstone at eye-level, I saw a bulging pair of eyes staring back at me. Carefully scanning the rest of its body with my pen-light, I realized it was my first green salamander, and I called Tom and Rick. This one was not only easy to see but very accommodating in allowing us to photograph it before disappearing into the rock.
About 5 inches long, the green salamander's black body is speckled with lime-green markings that look remarkably like patches of lichens or mosses. This alone makes it very easy to identify — it's our only green salamander.
Furthermore, as an adaptation to its pancake-thin habitat, the body is flattened. The tips of its toes are expanded and squarish almost like those of a gecko as aids in climbing up and down the vertical faces of the damp rocks at night.
We marveled at these unique features as we focused our close-up lenses on its beautiful, sleek body. It was the only one we were privileged to study that day, but we hiked out of the forest very satisfied with our success at finding such a rare denizen "threatened" in Pennsylvania of Penn's Woods.
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060618/NEWS01/606180318