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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.
Examines over fifty years of research of the red-backed salamander
This informative book, first published in 1987, presents the theories of community ecology within the context of a natural example. The text describes and examines issues in community ecology and shows how research on salamanders has helped to solve some of the problems surrounding the theories. Salamanders exist in stable populations of the kind assumed in community theory and are more appropriate than most other animals for research on the applications of that theory. The interesting and meaningful results, collected from observation on these excellent subjects posed challenges to beliefs within community ecology. Life histories of salamanders, fieldwork in distinctly differing habitats, competition, predation and evolution are discussed in an easily readable text. Professional ecologists and students of community ecology and herpetology will be interedted in the information synthesised in this book.
The red-backed salamander, Plethodon cinereus, is a common woodland amphibian that is found throughout much of eastern North America. The species is important to forest ecological processes, and changes in their population density are often used to measure the impacts of forest management, pollution, and environmental change. Therefore, consistent methods of density estimation are required. In the first chapter, I review spatial capture-recapture, a modern modeling tool that incorporates spatial information to reliably estimate population density without the need for the ad-hoc methods that render other density estimates incomparable. It can also be used to make inferences on space-use, population dynamics, and connectivity. I then demonstrate the versatility of spatial capture-recapture using P. cinereus mark-recapture data collected from my study sites in central Pennsylvania. For the second chapter of this thesis, I use spatial capture-recapture and other modeling approaches to test hypotheses about P. cinereus climate change adaptive capacity. This salamander is a convenient model for understanding dispersal-limited species, so I tested eight hypotheses to see how behavioral plasticity and fitness were affected by climate variability. Based on previous evidence, I also tested whether a common color polymorphism is a useful visual cue for predicting within-population variation in climate tolerances. Using four years of mark-recapture information from Maryland, I found the color morph is not a useful indicator, but overall, the population did show strong climate preferences, indicating that population persistence could be threatened by warmer and drier conditions predicted in the future.
"Ohio's resident amphibians currently include 25 species and subspecies of salamanders, a complex of unisexual ambystomatid salamanders, and 14 species of frogs and toads. Existing, comprehensive works of amphibians for Ohio are dated and out-of-print. Given this deficiency, and pressured by recent survey and monitoring activity and current research needs, the decision to produce a comprehensive book about Ohio's amphibians, which this volume represents, quickly followed. Focusing on verifiable information about the amphibian species of Ohio, the core of this tome is comprised of 37 chapters, organized by sections on salamanders and on frogs and toads, covering all amphibians in Ohio that have been documented and vouchered. Preceding these taxonomic, species-oriented chapters are sections on the history of herpetological work in Ohio, a summary of the Ohio environment in which its amphibian species exist, informative introductions to amphibian systematics, brief summaries of the two groups, and keys to adult and larval stages. Following the species accounts are sections on potential occurences in Ohio; on species ranking based on conservation status and knowledge; on amphibian conservation; on amphibian distribution; on environmental applications; and, a summary. Completing the book are two appendices involving field and vouchering/documentation techniques, a glossary, a combined and comprehensive listing of cited literature, and an index. This book is both scientifically accurate and written in a style suitable for the complete spectrum of individuals and entities who are professionally or casually involved or interested in amphibians"--Abstract, page iii.