the "who" and the "where" of the Hartford Salamander Team
Who we're saving,
where we're saving 'em
Who's Migrating in April-may?
(Who are we saving from car tires?)
Spotted Salamanders
The team’s namesake, but not the only thing we’re helping across the road. Spotted Salamanders are the usual salamander species we find slowly making their way across roadways, using the first rainy nights of spring (from late March into June) to get from their living habitat (thick forests) to their breeding habitat (pretty much any stagnant water where fish don’t exist to eat the eggs). Wood Frogs, Spotted Salamanders, Peepers, and rarer salamanders like Jeffersons and Four-Toeds all share the ponds and puddles and vernal pools as nurseries for their eggs.
Wood Frogs
Wood frogs are a little freaky, they freeze solid in the winters then come back to life from their frozen ice cube form. It’s gnarly and complicated how they do this, involving the chemistry concept that “increasing solute concentration decreases the temperature at which freezing happens.” What this basically boils down to is that the frogs are extra sugary at the start of winter, and they’ve got so much sugar stored in important tissues that those spots don’t freeze. There’s also evidence the frozen frogs are actively “fermenting” in certain parts of their bodies, which produces heat and saves ’em from getting stabbed by pointy ice crystals.
Spring Peepers
Some ponds in Quechee get so loud in Spring they can seriously damage your ears and these tiny guys are why. They’re also the most common species we find on Hartford roads, and the hardest to see with our headlamps. They don’t reflect well on dark wet roads, and are seriously small. But you can spend all night ferrying just Peepers across local roadways without much time to rest – they keep you busy, and present quite the challenge.
Where Does roadkill Happen?
Where do roads get in the way of Migration?
When there is:
1.) Body of water (without fish) on one side
2.) Thick forest on the other
... yeah, it happens a bunch in hartford.
The upper Valley aquatic center is one of these critical locations.
