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FAUNA – An exciting find

By Mary Parker Sonis
Look who just turned up in my backyard. This is a “species-of-special-concern,” “we-no-longer-have-these-in-Bolin-Forest,” genuine four-toed salamander. I have been searching every muddy bog near Bolin Creek for the past three years looking for this diminutive, lungless salamander, and he made his appearance under one of the lucky paving stones in my backyard. My yard borders on Bolin Forest, and the only water source is the creek and its vernal ponds. So, somewhere down by the creek, a population of four-toed salamanders has managed to survive.

Unlike other salamanders, which have five back toes, this little one has four. His Latin name is Hemidactylium scutatum: dactyl from finger and scutatum meaning armored body. He really doesn’t have armor, but he does have costal grooves, like many other salamanders, which look a bit like armor plates. His other interesting feature is his tail. Do you see how it is very constricted at its base? This salamander has the clever ability to voluntarily detach his tail when attacked by a predator. Many lizards and salamanders can drop their tails when attacked, but this one doesn’t wait to be grabbed to detach his tail. He simply drops it (still wriggling) to distract the predator and then scurries off to safety.
This tiny 3-inch salamander is extremely sensitive to changes in habitat and the detritus of human development. Road construction is a major threat to this species. Four-toed salamanders like sphagnum bogs surrounded by deciduous forests, as well as vernal pools that have stream intake or output and grassy areas near beaver ponds. Acidic water and fertilizer runoff can completely destroy a colony. Fortunately, we have a beaver pond, as well as a vernal pond that connects to a tiny stream entering Bolin Creek. We have limited mosses, but they have found decent conditions in our little forest.
Four-toed salamanders are terrestrial salamanders that come to the vernal pools in March to lay their eggs. They tend to lay their eggs directly in the wet moss at the very edge of a pool. After a mother salamander guards her eggs, the newly hatched larvae wriggle out and drop into the water. They are born with external gills, but after a few short weeks they are ready to return to the forest, where they hunt for tiny ticks, insects and other invertebrates. Four-toed salamanders are almost always hidden in burrows or under flat rocks and rotting logs. Like many salamanders, they hunt by night.
I am excited to find a four-toed salamander, because I had been told that this entire colony of amphibians had perished when the beaver dam was destroyed about 10 years ago. None had been seen in our forest since that day. Now the beavers have a lodge that I visit almost daily (a straight shot downhill from where I found this salamander) and our four-toed friends are enjoying their old habitat. Many people are convinced that Bolin Forest is a degraded habitat, and it is heartening to think that nature has prevailed.
Of course, I credit the unrelenting work of the beavers for this triumph. If there is one four-toed salamander in my yard, then there are others in the forest. Perhaps they are breeding in one of the tiny channels created by the beavers or down at our vernal pond where the spotteds lay their eggs. Time will tell.