If you are doing yard work this fall, you may uncover a small little amphibian called the redback salamander. Now, this three-to-four inch creature may look like your run-of-the-mill creepy crawly, but this is no ordinary salamander.
Welcome to this week's edition of Something Wild. I'm Rosemary Conroy for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
If you are doing yard work this fall, you may uncover a small little amphibian called the redback salamander. Now, this three-to-four inch creature may look like your run-of-the-mill creepy crawly, but this is no ordinary salamander.
First off, a redback salamanders has no lungs or gills ? it breathes through its skin.
And even stranger: unlike other amphibians, this slim little salamander has sworn off water ? it has no aquatic stage in its development at all. These rusty-colored creatures lay their eggs under rotting logs, instead of ponds or wetlands.
And unlike most other amphibian moms, the female redback salamander guards her eggs and keeps them moist until they hatch. Her offspring emerge not as tadpoles or larvae like most frogs and other salamanders do, but simply as miniature adults.
Right from the start, redbacks spend their days totally terrestrially ? chasing down snails, worms, and insects. Because they spend most of their time hunting beneath the leaf litter, they tend to remain unseen by most humans.
But their impact on the forest has not gone unnoticed. Red-back salamanders help cycle nutrients through the ecosystem. They eat lots of tiny insects which typically eat leaves and other detritus. Then when the salamanders get eaten, it keeps those nutrients moving throughout the food chain.
This works well because there are boatloads of redback salamanders in a typical forest. This was discovered, in fact, right here in New Hampshire in 1975. Biologists at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest figured out that the weight of all the salamanders in their study area equaled the total weight of all the small mammals.
That means there are potentially hundreds of red-backs per acre! That?s a lot of nutrient cycling. And that?s just one more cool thing about these amazing little amphibians.
Something Wild is a joint production of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, NHPR, and New Hampshire Audubon
For Something Wild, I?m Rosemary Conroy.
