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This is the time of year when a little army of grey and brown creatures, with slight blue flecking on their sides, starts moving through the forests at University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM).
The Jefferson Salamanders are headed for their breeding pond, a natural depression in the forest floor filled with relatively pure water, where they will mate before returning to the forest. The resultant larvae have external gills to start but will first develop front legs, then rear ones. When they are fully developed, they will climb out of the pond and head into the dense hardwood forest themselves.
It’s a ritual that has been going on for hundreds, if not, thousands of years in the mature woodlot along the west bank of the Credit River, says Wayne Weller.
As an Erindale College graduate student in 1974, he spent a year capturing, studying and releasing the amphibians. His work under the supervision of Professor Gary Sprules led to publication of an article in the Canadian Journal of Zoology.
“It was the first authenticated record of Jefferson Salamanders in Canada,” Weller said yesterday in a telephone interview from Niagara where he now works as the senior environmental scientist for Ontario Power Generation.
Weller was also part of the Jefferson Salamander Recovery Team which did the groundwork that led to the indicator species being listed as nationally threatened in 2003.
Over the years Weller has maintained his interest in the Jefferson and blue-spotted salamander population at UTM, which he confirmed through his grad studies at more than 600 at one time. His “year in the woods” consisted of tracking the comings and goings to the pond, which is tricky because salamanders are nocturnal. They live in leaf litter or soil on the forest floor and are all but invisible to the non-scientist, except when they mate or migrate. He studied the development of the eggs and larvae. He trapped some of the migrants by putting up a zig-zagging drift fence that forced them into corners, where a small pit was dug, filled with collection canisters. “Unfortunately, we didn’t have the technology then to tag them.”
The same breed was also discovered by environmental enthusiast Donald Barber at the Cawthra Bush in Mississauga several years ago and is suspected of being a resident of the Mississauga Garden Park at Riverwood, just upriver from UTM. The Jefferson has been in the news recently because Ontario is providing a long-needed update of its 1971 Endangered Species Act.
More than three decades after Weller’s work, UTM Professors Sprules and Nicholas Collins would love to be supervising similar student studies of the Jefferson population. “If we wanted to get out there and get a good knowledge, this would be the time of year to be doing it,” says Collins.
Some support last year from Environment Canada and Credit Valley Conservation allowed some work to be done. Unfortunately the funds didn’t come through in time for the migration but the school has confirmed that the Jeffersons are still around. They put out boards and found some salamanders under them and, “we did see some mating activity, so we know they’re still there,” says Collins.
Now that new legislation is being put in place, the university is hoping that there will be some funding to go with the tougher rules to protect 133 species. A graduate student for a couple of years, a $10,000 grant, money for material and equipment would be a big help.
“We will likely be applying for a grant so we can study this in a really disciplined way,” says Collins.
Nowadays, you could place a tracking transmitter in a salamander’s back and learn far more than he was ever able to in his studies, says Weller.
As an undergrad, Weller, then living in Etobicoke, rode the shuttle bus out to the Mississauga Rd. campus for the first three years of his undergrad at Erindale. The South Building didn’t exist yet, so students like him who were in four-year programs, took their final year downtown. Weller plans to attend the 40th anniversary reunion here June 2.
Although some construction activity on campus encroached a little too close for comfort to the Salamander habitat a few years ago, Weller says the campus is an ideal location for long-term survival of the species. The natural conditions are obviously right and there is a watchful academic community keeping an eye on all that (non-student) scurrying in the woods.