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Salamanders
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Bold words will link to glossary
Great Smoky Mountain National Park is often referred to as The Salamander
Capitol of the World because 30 species of salamander can be found in its 524,000 acres.
The Smokies are considered a biodiversity hotspot for one group of salamanders called
the “lungless salamanders”. Salamanders can really range in size, the Hellbender, the
largest in the park, can grow up to almost 3 feet in length, has teeth and roams stream
bottoms at night. The smallest species in the Smokies is the Pygmy and it usually is
smaller than 2 inches. Salamanders are amphibians that live in streams, seeps and moist
places at any elevation in the Smokies. At least one salamander in the Smokies is
endemic, the Jordan’s Red-cheeked Salamander (link to round tail photo) is found living
in moss at the highest elevations, a habitat that unfortunately is very threatened because
of exotic species and air pollution.
Salamanders are four-legged, have smooth, moist skin and lack scales. Most
salamanders, when in their larval stage, or teenage years, live in the water. This stage
for salamanders can last anywhere from a few days to several years, depending on the
species. As adults, many salamanders are called quasi-terrestrial, meaning they live on
land and water. Salamanders have long narrow bodies and tails for swimming and small
legs for crawling on land. You can look at a salamander and tell where it prefers to be by
noticing things like the shape of the tail and the length of the legs. Species that are
usually found in water have tails that are more keeled or triangular shaped. Species
found on land typically have round tails and longer legs. Salamanders are voiceless so
they rely on pheromones and smell to find that perfect salamander to mate with.
Salamander Monitoring
Most people go to the doctor for a yearly checkup to make sure they are healthy.
Park biologists do a similar thing for the plants and animals in a park, only the periodic
checkup is called monitoring. Salamander monitoring in the Smokies is done in several
different ways; one method is a mark and recapture study. A length of stream is marked
off into one meter sections, students on field trips enter the stream to look for and
hopefully catch salamanders. They note the flag number where they caught their
salamander and bring it to the data collection station by the stream’s edge. There, each
salamander is identified to species, weighed, measured and checked to see if it has been
previously marked. If it is large enough and not already marked, the salamander will be
brought up to our lab where we carefully inject it with a small, fluorescent number tag.
We keep it overnight to make sure there haven’t been any injuries and then release the
salamander back to the same spot where it was originally caught. If we catch that
salamander again, we can compare the data from the first time and check to see how
much it moved and grew. Biologists actually know very little about the habits of aquatic
salamanders.
One of the reasons it is important to monitor salamanders is because they are
considered bio-indicators due to their sensitivity to environmental change. Salamanders
lay eggs in water; the eggs have no outer covering or protective shell like chicken eggs.
This makes their eggs very vulnerable to chemical pollutants, ultraviolet radiation, and
other things that disturb growth. Also salamanders skin is permeable, meaning it allows
water and gases to enter and leave; they’re “environmental sponges”. When the water is
healthy, they’re healthy and they’re eggs are healthy. Things like acid rain affect the
water salamanders live in and lay their eggs in. When there’s a low population of
salamanders in a water source that may be an indication of low water quality.
Perhaps because they are so mysterious, salamanders are the subject of numerous
myths and legends. The name salamander comes from Greek words meaning fire-lizards.
Ancient peoples linked salamanders to fire because salamanders often crawled out from
logs that had been thrown onto fires, leading people to believe that these animals could
walk through fire.
Glossary terms
1. Terrestrial: Plants or animals that live on land
2. Aquatic: Plants or animals that live in the water
3. Metamorphosis: When a creature goes through a change in its life cycle
4. Pheromone: A chemical secreted by an animal that influences the behavior or
development of others of the same species, often functioning as an attractant of
the opposite sex
5. Reptiles: Any of various cold-blooded, usually egg-laying vertebrates of the class
Reptilia; also have an external covering of scales or horny plates and breath by
means of lungs
6. Amphibians: Cold-blooded animals with a backbone that have a gilled aquatic
stage and an air breathing stage.
7. Bio-indicator: Anything that because of it living or not living indicates a healthy
or unhealthy environment
8. Larval stage: An immature form of some animals before they become adults.
Larvae do not resemble their adult form.
9. Biodiversity: biological diversity is the number of different plant and animal
species found in that area.
10. Endemic: found only in one locale, in this instance, Great Smoky Mountains
National Park
11. Lungless salamanders: salamanders that lack lungs and breathe (exchange
oxygen and carbon dioxide) through the tiny blood vessels in their skin.
12. Exotic Species: plants or animals not native to the place they are found. In the
Smokies, over 40 plants, insects and other animals are not originally from the
area, most of these have no predators in the ecosystem so their population
numbers are out of control.
13. Air Pollution: The Smokies suffers from some of the worst air pollution in the
country. For more information, see the O-zone.
Book Resources
1. Tilley, Stephen G. and Huheey, James E. Reptiles and Amphibians of the
Smokies. 2001. Great Smoky Mountains Association. Gatlinburg: TN.
2. Huheey, James E., Stupka, Arthur. 1967. Amphibians and Reptiles of Great
Smoky Mountains National Park. The University of Tennessee Press. Knoxville:
TN.
3. Petranka, James. 1998. Salamanders of the United States and Canada.
Smithsonian Books.
4. Martof, Bernard S. 1980. Amphibians and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virgina.
The University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill: NC.
5. Conant, Roger. 1958. A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of the United
States and Canada: The Peterson Field Guide Series. Houghton Mifflin
Company. Boston: MA.
Fun Children Books
6. Horstman, Lisa. The Great Smoky Mountains Salamander Ball. Great Smoky
Mountains Association. Gatlinburg: TN. Ages 5-10.
7. Mazer, Anne. The Salamander Room. 1994. Dragonfly Books. Ages 4-8.
Websites
http://www.herpsofnc.org/herps_of_NC/salamanders/salamanders.html This site
has great photos, conservation information, endangered species and fun facts on
amphibians and reptiles in North Carolina. Highly recommended.
http://hellbenders.sanwalddesigns.com/index.shtml This website has great
information, photos and details about conservation efforts for the amazing Hellbender
salamander.
http://www.uga.edu/srelherp/salamanders/ This site has photos and information
about salamanders in South Carolina and Georgia.