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The small, terrestrial eastern red-backed salamander is abundant on many forest floors of northeastern North America. Dr. Robert Jaeger and many of his graduate students spent over 50 years studying this species in New York and Virginia, using ecological techniques in forests and behavioral experiments in laboratory chambers in an attempt to understand how this species interacts with other species in the forest and the components of its intra- and intersexual social behaviors. The competitive and social behaviors of this species are unusually complex for an amphibian. This species is highly aggressive towards other similar-size species where they cohabit in forests, often leading to very little geographic overlap between the species. The authors examine the fascinating behavioral traits of this species including social monogamy, mutual mate guarding, sexual coercion, inter-species communication, and conflict resolution.
It is important to determine how forest management practices affect non-target species such as salamanders. Analyses commonly done at treatment or stand level suggest that salamander abundances decline after disturbance. However, salamanders have small home ranges on the scale of within-treatment habitat heterogeneity that is created by background conditions and silvicultural treatments A finer scale within-treatment assessment of salamander responses is needed to determine how salamander species associate with the available range of habitats. Oak management regimes utilize prescribed fire, which affects forest stands unevenly due to differences in fire intensity. Salamander community data was collected from 2013-2014 in the unglaciated Appalachian plateau of Ohio three years after a series of treatments designed to mimic natural heterogeneous disturbance. The treatment consisted of thinning in 2000 followed by prescribed fires in 2001, 2005, 2010. Discriminant function analyses showed that sites did not group by treatment or replicate, and redundancy analysis showed that different salamander species associated with the range of microhabitats along a habitat gradient. Occupancy analyses were used to examine habitat relationships of the two most abundant species that represent two different life-history guilds. The common upland breeder, Plethodon cinereus (eastern red-backed salamander), associated with mesic habitats. In contrast, Ambystoma opacum (marbled salamander), a pool-breeding species, associated with increased oak composition in the overstory. Therefore, silvicultural management designed to regenerate oaks creates habitat heterogeneity that supports salamander species diversity. One species or group is not sufficient as an indicator representing all salamanders as silviculture may differentially impact species with different habitat associations. This study showed that salamander biodiversity is maintained in oak forests managed with disturbance where heterogeneity provides habitat for a range of species.
Forest wildlife conservation is critically required in many parts of the world today. This book presents a merger between the elements of wildlife conservation and habitat conservation, and explains how these disciplines can be used to promote the conservation of vertebrates in forests around the world.
The landscapes of North America, including eastern forests, have been shaped by humans for millennia, through fire, agriculture, hunting, and other means. But the arrival of Europeans on America’s eastern shores several centuries ago ushered in the rapid conversion of forests and woodlands to other land uses. By the twentieth century, it appeared that old-growth forests in the eastern United States were gone, replaced by cities, farms, transportation networks, and second-growth forests. Since that time, however, numerous remnants of eastern old growth have been discovered, meticulously mapped, and studied. Many of these ancient stands retain surprisingly robust complexity and vigor, and forest ecologists are eager to develop strategies for their restoration and for nurturing additional stands of old growth that will foster biological diversity, reduce impacts of climate change, and serve as benchmarks for how natural systems operate. Forest ecologists William Keeton and Andrew Barton bring together a volume that breaks new ground in our understanding of ecological systems and their importance for forest resilience in an age of rapid environmental change. This edited volume covers a broad geographic canvas, from eastern Canada and the Upper Great Lakes states to the deep South. It looks at a wide diversity of ecosystems, including spruce-fir, northern deciduous, southern Appalachian deciduous, southern swamp hardwoods, and longleaf pine. Chapters authored by leading old-growth experts examine topics of contemporary forest ecology including forest structure and dynamics, below-ground soil processes, biological diversity, differences between historical and modern forests, carbon and climate change mitigation, management of old growth, and more. This thoughtful treatise broadly communicates important new discoveries to scientists, land managers, and students and breathes fresh life into the hope for sensible, effective management of old-growth stands in eastern forests.