Visiting Old Friends in Dundas

Another year of salamander monitoring has begun and with the balmy weather I was excited to get out of the office for the afternoon.  The ice on the vernal pools is beginning to dissipate and coupled with the warm and rainy weather the male Jefferson Salamanders are on the move (confirmed this morning with 3 individuals) and looking to make their way to the ponds.

My only salamander sighting this evening was this Eastern Red-backed Salamander who I spotted peering into a pitfall trap saying "Not today!".  This species is a terrestrial salamander that can be found under rocks and logs in forests.  While I have seen them in and around vernal pools, they do not utilize these seasonal aquatic features for reproduction like many of Ontario's other 12 salamander species. 

I recently read an article about Red-back's 'homing' capabilities; the experiment in the article found that when moved 30m from a home range, 90% of individuals quickly returned via a near-straight path.  At 90m the return rate dropped to about 25%.  The adults and juveniles communicate through phermones which likely play into this ability.  The article: Kleeberger, S.R. and Werner, J.K. (1982). ''Home range and homing behavior of Plethodon cinereus in northern Michigan.'' Copeia, 1982(2), 409-415.

While I was checking out some dead stems from last summer's find of a patch of Broad Beech Fern this Wood Frog was another first on the year.  This one was dopey as they come, maybe still somewhere between a freeze and a thaw which the species is known to tolerate through 'nucleating proteins' in their cells.