Amphibians
Flatwoods Salamander
Ambystoma cingulatum · also called frosted flatwoods salamander, reticulated flatwoods salamander
The flatwoods salamander does something that sounds like a mistake. It lays its eggs in a pond that has no water in it, and then it waits. When the strategy works, the timing is perfect. When the autumn rains fail, the entire year’s breeding is lost, and for a salamander this rare, that is a disaster.
Overview
The flatwoods salamanders, split in 2007 into a frosted and a reticulated species, live in the longleaf pine flatwoods of the southeastern US coastal plain. They are small, slender, and dark, spending most of the year underground in crayfish burrows in the fire-maintained pinewoods.
Eggs in a dry basin
In autumn the adults migrate to small seasonal ponds while they are still dry, and the female lays her eggs on the bare pond floor under grass and moss. The eggs wait for winter rain to flood the pond and trigger hatching, which gives the larvae the longest possible time to grow.
Endangered
The species is federally protected and gone from most of its historical sites, as the longleaf pine ecosystem has been cleared and, where it survives, degraded by fire suppression that shades out the grass the eggs need. Recovery relies on prescribed fire, pond restoration, and rearing larvae past their most fragile stage.
Status
Endangered and declining, one of the highest amphibian conservation priorities in North America.
Flatwoods Salamander: common questions
Why does the flatwoods salamander lay its eggs in a dry pond?
It is a way of getting a head start on a very short window. The salamander breeds in autumn, but the small depression ponds it uses are seasonal and are usually dry at that time, filling only when the winter rains arrive. By migrating early and laying eggs directly on the exposed pond floor, tucked under grass and moss to stay moist, the female puts the eggs in place so that they hatch the instant the pond floods, giving the larvae the maximum possible time to grow and transform before the water dries again in late spring. The catch is that if the rains fail or come too late, the eggs simply do not hatch and the entire cohort is lost.
Why is it so endangered?
Its habitat has almost vanished, and what remains is often the wrong shape. The longleaf pine flatwoods of the southeastern coastal plain once covered a huge area and are now reduced to a small fraction, cleared for timber plantations, farms, and development. The remaining patches need frequent low-intensity fire to stay open, and decades of fire suppression have let dense shrubs and hardwoods grow up, both in the uplands and around the breeding ponds, degrading them for the salamander. Ponds have also been ditched and drained. On top of all that, the species breeds slowly and its eggs depend on precise autumn and winter rainfall, so it has little resilience when a bad year comes.
What is the difference between the frosted and reticulated flatwoods salamanders?
They were considered one species until genetic and pattern studies separated them in 2007, using the Apalachicola River in the Florida panhandle as the dividing line. The frosted flatwoods salamander, to the east, is black with a fine dusting of small silvery-grey flecks that look like frost. The reticulated flatwoods salamander, to the west in the panhandle and Alabama, has a bolder, darker, net-like or ring-like pattern. They are otherwise very similar in size, biology, and habitat needs, and both are in serious trouble, with the reticulated form the rarer and more endangered of the two.
Can anything be done to save it?
A combination of measures is being applied where populations survive, mostly on national forests, wildlife refuges, and military land in the panhandle and southern Georgia. Prescribed burning is used to reopen the pine flatwoods and the pond edges. Breeding ponds are restored by removing invading trees and, where necessary, plugging drainage ditches. And because so few larvae survive the natural hatch, biologists collect eggs, rear the larvae in protected mesocosms through the vulnerable early stage, and release the juveniles. These efforts have kept some populations going, but the species remains one of the highest amphibian conservation priorities in North America.