Desmognathus

Abstract: There were about 2950 salamanders per ha (1770 g/ha wet wt) in the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire. The terrestrial species, Plethodon cinereus, accounted for about 93.5% of the total biomass while the streamside species, Desmognathus fuscus, Eurycea bislineata and Gyrinophilus porphyriticus, accounted for the remaining 6.5%. Notophthalmus viridescens was present, but was rare and insignificant in the biomass calculations. The population size of salamanders at Hubbard Brook appears to be stable. The biomass of salamanders is about twice that of birds during the bird's peak (breeding) season and is about equal to the biomass of small mammals.

Abstract: Preface Acknowledgements 1. Challenges to community theory 2. Equilibrium and stability in natural populations 3. An introduction to the variety of salamander life histories 4. Communities of pond-inhabiting salamanders 5. Communities of terrestrial salamanders 6. Communities of streamside slaamanders 7. Evolution in salamander communities: experimental tests 8. Salamanders in future ecological research References Indexes.

Abstract: Five years ago, experiments were proposed to determine whether competition or predation is the principal ecological factor in the organization of the community of Desmognathus salamanders. The experiments were conducted in the Nantahala Mountains of North Carolina over a four-year period, 1981-1984. There were four species present: D. quadramaculatus, the largest and most aquatic; D. monticola, the next largest, a stream-bank species; D. ochrophaeus, smaller and largely terrestrial; and D. aeneus, the smallest and most terrestrial of the four. A block design of replicate plots along streams was used. Removing a smaller species (D. ochrophaeus) was expected to cause an increase in the D. monticola or D. quadramaculatus populations only if competition were the important interaction. Removing D. monticola individuals was expected to increase the abundance of D. ochrophaeus, whether competition or predation was important, but it would increase D. quadramaculatus numbers only in the case of competition. The ou...