Walking around the Virginia Living Museum, it’s easy to miss rows of ceramic tiles scattered between a few of the exhibits. But to a salamander, the tiles are a habitat haven.
“They’re really dependent on a moist environment,” said Kortney Jaworski, the museum’s ectotherms curator. “So these types of cover objects hold the moisture and serve as a safe place for them to be.”
The museum is using them to learn more about the slithering species that naturally inhabits its grounds.
This marks the fourth year of the Salamander Survey project, which was launched through a small grant from the international Herpetologists’ League.
Jaworski said the goal is to educate the public and collect regular data about the creatures.
“We thought this would be an easy way to kind of see how the forest floor ecosystem is doing here,” she said. “But also, we wanted to create a program that we could get the public engaged in doing science and learn about salamanders, which is an animal that a lot of people get confused by.”
The eastern red-backed salamander is an amphibian, but lives differently from others that lay their eggs in water and breathe air as adults. The red-backed salamander lives on land and does not have lungs, absorbing oxygen directly into its permeable skin.
“They spend their entire life on the forest floor, basically hiding under the leaf litter, right under our feet,” Jaworski said.
So that’s where the museum looks for them.
On Monday, officials conducted their last Salamander Survey of the season. They’re run about twice a month from October through March or April. (The salamanders hide underground during summer, hiding from the heat.)
Jaworski and two other volunteers started with a set of tiles along the property’s fenceline behind the new Wild Care Center.
They carefully flipped over each tile and documented what they saw — mostly snails, worms and lots and lots of ants, but also a few small toads and ring-necked snakes. No salamanders.
The group moved to two other sites behind the Dinosaur Discovery Trail and next to the red wolves exhibit. Similar results.
Though it’s disappointing when they don’t find salamanders, the observations still help inform the museum, Jaworski said. Instead of measuring salamanders, the group uses probes to collect environmental data that day, such as soil temperature and humidity.
Four seasons of surveys have documented more than 100 salamanders. When possible, Jaworski uses an injectable dye kit to mark individuals, so officials can keep track of repeats.
One salamander injected during the first season was found again this year, she said.
The surveys have been limited to museum staff and volunteers because of variability with weather and scheduling, but officials hope to eventually allow anyone to participate.
Volunteer Larry Lewis said he’s always loved observing nature but didn’t have much time to devote to it until retiring several years ago. He’s now logged more than 6,000 hours at the Living Museum, including helping with the salamander project from the start.
He said it’s changed how he looks at the ground all around us.
“I can't believe the world that’s under this leaf litter,” Lewis said. “In fact, when we come out here to do the survey, I feel a little guilty about just stepping on leaf matter, because of all the stuff that you can find. It's a world you don't know exists. It's just fascinating.”
The Appalachian region, including Virginia, is a global salamander hotspot, boasting more than 50 species. That’s more than anywhere else in the world.
But many are threatened by climate change. The eastern red-backed, for example, relies on cooler temperatures.
That’s another reason the Living Museum wanted to start tracking the species, Jaworski said.
“Amphibians in general are kind of our ecosystem bio-indicators, meaning if something's going wrong, those are the animals that often feel those effects early on. And if we're monitoring them, we can see those things changing before some of the others.”
