University researchers plumb secret world of salamanders
B.C. student, professor launch project to track shy creatures with microchips
V A NCOUVER They ’re elusive, mildly poisonous and spend much of their time burrowing for insects underground. It’s little wonder, then, that not much is known about the northwestern salamander.
A research project by a fourthyear biology student and her professor at the University of the Fraser Valley aims to change that, tracking the shy little creatures with a surgically implanted microchip to determine how they spend their time.
Last week, Jessica Barclay captured three salamanders near a pond at UFV’s Abbotsford campus. (She named them Alice, Sam and Cornelius.) A veterinarian anesthetized the research subjects before making a small incision in their abdominal area to insert a 1.3-gram radio transmitter. Barclay then released them back at the pond. She hopes to capture and track one more in the days to come.
“If you put the transmitter outside them on their body, it inhibits movement and harms them,” she explained. “(Surgery) was a better option.”
The transmitter will be removed in six weeks — one week before its tiny battery runs out and the animals go off the grid. In the meantime, Barclay and UFV biology Prof. Christine Dalton have unprecedented insight into the secret world of salamanders.
“They’ve moved about two metres from the cover boards (where they were found and released),” said Barclay. “It just started raining, but we suspect we’re going to see them moving more in the wet weather.”
While the local salamander population seems to be going strong, many amphibians are endangered, including some frogs. Because they have permeable skin and live in both water and on land, they respond quickly to changes in climate. “We don’t really know if this species is declining because there hasn’t been much study. If they’re not declining, it could be useful to understand why they are doing well when other amphibians are not,” said Dalton.
Northwestern salamanders are found from the southern tip of Alaska to Northern California, from sea level to about 3,000 metres. Some remain aquatic all their lives, while others develop lungs and move to land.
Barclay’s study, an independent research project undertaken as part of her undergraduate degree, is focused on land-loving terrestrial salamanders. She came up with the idea while working with Dalton on a study of UFV’s aquatic salamander population.
One of only a few native amphibians that are able to survive in areas where predatory fish and bullfrog populations have become established, the northwestern salamander secretes a poison that is strong enough to kill small predators, such as snakes and shrews, but only causes mild skin irritation in people. They are carnivorous and eat insects, spiders, worms and slugs.
Barclay is hoping it will be easy to find and recapture her tiny test subjects in six weeks before allowing them to return to happy anonymity.