One of our main questions we asked at the begging of the study, was if cover boards were more or less effective as a cover object when compared to natural cover objects such as rocks and downed logs. The graph to the left shows the total number of salamanders found under the different cover objects. Our results shows that cover boards were the most effective cover object for both species of interest (Figure 1). Red-backed salamanders were found more often under downed logs than any other natural cover object while Northern Slimy Salamanders preferred rocks (Figure 1).
How Important is Soil Surface Temperature?Since salamander are known to be found in cool, moist environments, we wanted to know if the soil surface temperatures under the cover object played a role in whether or not salamanders would be present. What we found is that salamander were present under cover objects with a soil surface temperature of 0 to 20 degrees Celsius (Figure 2). For both species, there was a nicely shaped bell-curve with the most salamanders being found under objects with a soil surface temperature around 12 degrees Celsius (Figure 2).
Was Weather a Factor?We monitored our study sites on three separate occasions. The first monitoring event took place on February 15th which was a warm and dry day. Overall, we collected 24 salamanders on this day (Figure 3). The next monitoring event was on March 22nd, right after a snow fall. Surprisingly, we again captured 24 salamanders. During the last monitoring event we seen a spike in captures with a total 46 salamanders captured. This last monitoring event was just as warm as the first event, however there was a significant amount of rainfall a few days prior to our monitoring which resulted in more moist environments under the cover objects.
Which Study Sites Were Most Productive?Our last question we addressed was which of our four study sites had the most captures. What our results showed is that Quad North sinkhole had the most captures throughout our entire monitoring process (Figure 4). The least amount of captures was at Frog Pond. This may be because Frog Pond on average contained warmer and drier soils than the other study sites.
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