The Amphibian Story - Nature Labs

Estimated Read Time: 3 minutes

Migrating for Love

Hey! Why did the salamander cross the road? To get to the other side…for love, of course.

For those amphibians that aren’t lucky enough to turn into frogsicles, they do what so many of us wish we could do and sleep away the winter.

But when the snow turns to rain, salamanders and toads know it’s time to move.

Look, is this migration as epic as a hummingbird or a caribou? Not even close. But to these amphibians, it’s just as important.

You see, where they winter, it’s not super romantic. But a few hundred metres over there? Yeah…that’s the spot.

Because amphibians, like salamanders, breathe and drink through their skin, they need the rain to help them cross this wasteland to reach their sexy pond.

And once they make it? Well, you know. ????

Some salamander offspring will never fully form into cute little waddlers like this, but rather live out their lives as a tiny aquatic predators. But for the many who trade in their gills for lungs – evolution is all about trades offs, after all – they walk out of the water to find hidden moisture in the forest.

And that’s what makes toads and salamanders so important to this landscape.

We all know frogs are the critical pest controllers of wetlands. But because toads and salamanders utilize both wetlands and forests, they provide the same services as frogs, but across both ecosystems, controlling populations of ticks and mosquitoes and other arthropods.

It’s a 340 million-year-old role that’s also key to preventing climate change.

Studies have shown that salamanders are often the top predator of beetles and worms and ants before they can consume things like fallen leaves that, if consumed by beetles and worms and ants, release carbon into the atmosphere.

When amphibians disappear, it’s not just these services that disappear – the entire ecosystem struggles to function.

A toad’s warts and a salamander’s tail store poison that can fend off many predators. Except snakes. Cranberry Marsh is home to an extra large, not well-understood population of garter snakes, who enjoy a little salamander-toad ceviche and guess who likes the snake? Otters! They help with fish who fertilize forests…See? Amphibians matter!

Especially for algae!

Without tadpoles in these ponds, algae populations explode in the water, but because tadpoles aren’t around to manage sediment, the algae can’t convert sun to nutrients critical to all life.

So, we need our salamanders and toads to make it to their sexy ponds every year, but increasingly they don’t.

One-third of amphibians worldwide are threatened and, alongside reptiles, they are the most endangered of species in Canada. Habitat loss isn’t helping, nor is the spread of an invasive fungal disease not dissimilar from that what’s facing our bat population.

But another big problem? Roads!

Because toads and salamanders are such darn picky spouses, to get their sexy on they insist on waddling and hopping across where we drive, in the rain and often at night. And the result is inevitable.

You know how Banff National Park built over and under passes for wildlife to cross safely? Some people are now working to build salamander tunnels to create safe passage.

Some communities close entire roads to help during the migration.

After all, if we lose our amphibians, according to the U.S. government, we’re talking about the loss of billions of dollars every year from services they provide.

So, as the snow turns to rain and you find yourself out walking between two areas that look almost exactly the same, remember – for a salamander – those few metres make all the difference in the world. And if a road’s in the way? Help them across – it doesn’t just mean the world to an amphibian, it means the world to us too.