It's always worth it to go out (for Salamandra) ;-)

[Andre Schmid]

The last days I really hoped for some nice viper weather this weekend...but rain, fog and a really bad weather...

So I take a walk through my neighborhood...a small (or maybe a big ?) Salamandra salamandra population...

I found only this one specimen under a stone

The habitat

[Sandra Panienka]

Still have a lot of reading to do on this species' life cycle, because I've been reading over 150 Salamandra papers over the last month - an unhealthy passtime that develops into a serious condition in cases of prolonged lack of rain.

Wow, I'm sort of getting a really bad conscience reading this. I've been way too lazy during the last couple of weeks and I'm really starting to hoard unread herpetology books.
I've not yet been too successful with using artifical covers for the slow worms, the one that I put on a dry stone wall last year started to attract one female slow worm this year - which is better than nothing, I guess.

During the last four weeks I got a bit into photographing the spot patterns of our salamander population. I love the variety, one individual seems to be more beautiful than the other. I still kind of wonder if we are in the zone were the two subspecies S.s.s. and S.s.t. interbreed. When I am out in the field the striped pattern (S.s. terrestris) always seems to be more common.

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Nice photorama, Sandra! While some look a bit more odd, these could all be animals I'd find myself (in surely pure terrestris area).

Monday night, tried something else - no photos but maximum amount of time for finding and counting animals with 3 colleagues - ended up with about 1km of swept trajectory over a period of 1h30, and counted 237 animals. Unbelievable...
I intended to do my fixed photo route afterwards, but too tired.

[Sandra Panienka]

Nice photorama, Sandra! While some look a bit more odd, these could all be animals I'd find myself (in surely pure terrestris area).

Yeah, you're right. I finally had the time to have a closer look at the drawings and maps in the Thiesmeier book. The variety in dorsal patterns of S.s. terrestris seems to be quite stunning. Although when I look at the dorsal patterns of the hybrids I think I'd never be able to differ between a S.s. terrestris with a funky dorsal pattern and a hybrid.
I still don't know where I read that the Heidelberg region is supposed to be in the hybrid zone (I thought it was mentioned in "Die Amphibien und Reptilien Baden-Württembergs", but I couldn't find it). When I look at the TK25 grid map in Thiesmeiers book we're clearly too far south of that zone. I also had a look at Veith 1992 who lists an Odenwald sample but didn't give any precise location; from his map it might be around TK 6218 or something, which would still be a bit too far south from Thiesmeiers map, but much closer than we are.
Damn, maybe I should make a trip to Bavaria.

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Just got back from another hike. Plenty of rain, but the first night > 5°C in a while (has been very cold for this time of year the last week or so). More or less same amount of animals as on March 4th (~ season kickoff) = 62 on the first 480m and another 33 on the remaining ca. 700m.

(( Anyone still interested in these boring details? ))

[Laura Bok]

Yes! Keep on counting...

I would love to share some numbers of our local salamander population as well - however, even the "local" population requires a 35 km drive, so I do not monitor it very regularly. If I had to guess though, I think I would turn out with much fewer specimen.

[Jürgen Gebhart]

(( Anyone still interested in these boring details? ))

Yesssss!

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Thanks. It would be indeed very cool if we could compare with a bunch of people across Europe the number of individuals per e.g. 100m transect...

It is my experience/impression that people often tend to underestimate abundance of terrestrial salamanders.

[Sandra Panienka]

Thanks. It would be indeed very cool if we could compare with a bunch of people across Europe the number of individuals per e.g. 100m transect...

I was thinking the same thing, but I would chose a 1000m transect which will then be split up within the territory to get the best result for the population. This would be a similar appraoch to the FFH random sample monitoring of wall and sand lizards. Unfortuantely, I will have to wait until the second half of the year to give this a try, because I'm already working in two bigger amphibian projects.

[Liam Russell]

Thanks. It would be indeed very cool if we could compare with a bunch of people across Europe the number of individuals per e.g. 100m transect...

It is my experience/impression that people often tend to underestimate abundance of terrestrial salamanders.

Have you been doing mark-recapture analysis on your data?