Salamanders shrinking as their mountain havens heat up

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Wild salamanders living in some of North America’s best salamander habitat are getting smaller as their surroundings get warmer and drier, forcing them to burn more energy in a changing climate.That’s the key finding of a new study, published March 25 in the journal Global Change Biology, that examined museum specimens caught in the Appalachian Mountains from 1957 to 2007 and wild salamanders measured at the same sites in 2011-2012. The salamanders studied from 1980 onward were, on average, 8% smaller than their counterparts from earlier decades. The changes were most marked in the Southern Appalachians and at low elevations — settings where detailed weather records showed the climate has warmed and dried out most.Scientists have predicted that some animals will get smaller in response to climate change, and this is strongest confirmation of that prediction.”This is one of the largest and fastest rates of change ever recorded in any animal,” said Karen R. Lips, an associate professor of biology at the University of Maryland and the study’s senior author. “We don’t know exactly how or why it’s happening, but our data show it is clearly correlated with climate change.” And it’s happening at a time when salamanders and other amphibians are in distress, with some species going extinct and others dwindling in number.”We don’t know if this is a genetic change or a sign that the animals are flexible enough to adjust to new conditions,” Lips said. “If these animals are adjusting, it gives us hope that some species are going to be able to keep up with climate change.”The study was prompted by the work of University of Maryland Prof. Emeritus Richard Highton, who began collecting salamanders in the Appalachian Mountains in 1957. The geologically ancient mountain range’s moist forests and long evolutionary history make it a global hot spot for a variety of salamander species. Highton collected hundreds of thousands of salamanders, now preserved in jars at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Service Center in Suitland, MD.But Highton’s records show a mysterious decline in the region’s salamander populations beginning in the 1980s. Lips, an amphibian expert, saw a similar decline in the frogs she studied in Central America, and tracked it to a lethal fungal disease. …


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