mike
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Scientists Try To Save Largest Salamander In North American (Hellbender)
11/8/04, ENN
ST. LOUIS, MO − The population of North America's largest salamander is
plummeting in Missouri and Arkansas, and scientists from five states met to
consider how to prevent the creature's disappearance.
About 35 members of the Hellbender Working Group met for meetings at the St.
Louis Zoo last week to review research and plans for helping prevent the
extinction of the 2-foot-long salamander, which lives in a few cold, spring-fed
Ozark streams.
Stanley Trauth, a zoology professor at Arkansas State University, showed
pictures of hellbenders with open sores, tumors and missing limbs and eyes. He
said that nine out of 10 animals found in the Spring River this year had serious
abnormalities.
"I'm at a loss, folks," Trauth said. "We just don't have a good explanation for
what's causing this."
Max Nickerson of the University of Florida, who has worked with hellbenders for
three decades, said his early research did not find nearly as many
abnormalities. He called the new results baffling.
Researchers say it was easy to find 100 hellbenders in a day in the 1970s and
1980s; now they are lucky to find a few.
Biologists believe that many factors may have hurt the hellbender, including
logging, gravel mining, sewage plant effluent, agricultural runoff, introduction
of trout, disturbance from boaters, poaching, deliberate killing and scientific
collection.
One researcher found evidence that hellbenders fare poorly in streams with lots
of plants growing out of the water and slowing down the current.
Others are looking at water quality issues, including the possible influence of
endocrine-disrupting chemicals on hellbender reproduction.
Another research project involves the effect of trout, which are not native to
Missouri. Alicia Mathis, a behavioral ecology professor at Southwestern Missouri
State University in Springfield, found that young Missouri hellbenders do not
recognize trout as a predator.
Mathis is teaching some of the 150 young hellbenders being reared in tanks at
the Zoo to freeze when they smell trout in the water.
If the project works, the schooled youngsters could be released into the wild
with less chance of being eaten.
"It could be a shot in the arm, for a population that really needs a shot in the
arm," she said.
Source: Herpdigest.org.
11/8/04, ENN
ST. LOUIS, MO − The population of North America's largest salamander is
plummeting in Missouri and Arkansas, and scientists from five states met to
consider how to prevent the creature's disappearance.
About 35 members of the Hellbender Working Group met for meetings at the St.
Louis Zoo last week to review research and plans for helping prevent the
extinction of the 2-foot-long salamander, which lives in a few cold, spring-fed
Ozark streams.
Stanley Trauth, a zoology professor at Arkansas State University, showed
pictures of hellbenders with open sores, tumors and missing limbs and eyes. He
said that nine out of 10 animals found in the Spring River this year had serious
abnormalities.
"I'm at a loss, folks," Trauth said. "We just don't have a good explanation for
what's causing this."
Max Nickerson of the University of Florida, who has worked with hellbenders for
three decades, said his early research did not find nearly as many
abnormalities. He called the new results baffling.
Researchers say it was easy to find 100 hellbenders in a day in the 1970s and
1980s; now they are lucky to find a few.
Biologists believe that many factors may have hurt the hellbender, including
logging, gravel mining, sewage plant effluent, agricultural runoff, introduction
of trout, disturbance from boaters, poaching, deliberate killing and scientific
collection.
One researcher found evidence that hellbenders fare poorly in streams with lots
of plants growing out of the water and slowing down the current.
Others are looking at water quality issues, including the possible influence of
endocrine-disrupting chemicals on hellbender reproduction.
Another research project involves the effect of trout, which are not native to
Missouri. Alicia Mathis, a behavioral ecology professor at Southwestern Missouri
State University in Springfield, found that young Missouri hellbenders do not
recognize trout as a predator.
Mathis is teaching some of the 150 young hellbenders being reared in tanks at
the Zoo to freeze when they smell trout in the water.
If the project works, the schooled youngsters could be released into the wild
with less chance of being eaten.
"It could be a shot in the arm, for a population that really needs a shot in the
arm," she said.
Source: Herpdigest.org.