Last year, at the Thomas S. Baskett Wildlife Research Area -- an MU wildlife research site since 1938 -- Tracy Green Rittenhouse launched a radiotelemetry tracking study of 39 spotted salamanders. Spotted salamanders are a six-inch woodland species with a slate-colored body and round yellow spots. They live out their lives between woods and shallow ponds where they breed and lay eggs. Rittenhouse, who is a doctoral student in Semlitsch's lab, is only the second person to fit spotted salamanders with tiny transmitters. And for good reason: Attaching electronic beacons to small, slithery creatures isn't easy. It involves anesthetizing each salamander, making an incision, and then placing the transmitter inside its body cavity.

It is, she admits, a slightly unsavory process. But it's worth the effort: "We know quite a bit about their lives in the pond, but not much about what happens when they leave the ponds and head into the woods. We need to learn more about their terrestrial habitats."

Rittenhouse began her study by selecting two ponds, one surrounded by woods and another bordered by a manmade grassland edge. After placing the radio-fitted salamanders into the ponds, she trudged out and recorded their movements each day for three months. As it turns out, obstacles matter to salamanders -- even natural obstacles.

Rittenhouse found that those salamanders faced with crossing the bluestem, Indian grass and fescue-filled fields, stayed put. "None of them walked more than two or three meters into the grassy field when they left the pond. They turned around. It was the first time we could really show that they can tell a difference between habitats," she says. The spotted salamanders in her study, in fact, avoided the inhospitable habitat even when there was another suitable pond and ideal forest just 100 meters away. Rittenhouse is today expanding on her findings in a larger study located in the Daniel Boone Conservation Area near Hermann, Mo.

Again and again, Semlitsch and his students have found that the success or failure of amphibian populations depends not only upon the availability of such small isolated wetlands, but also on the ability of the vulnerable creatures to move among them. Unfortunately these types of wetlands -- the small ponds and seasonally flooded spaces that are most critical for amphibians'
survival -- are least likely to be protected by law.

"The regulatory landscape favors larger wetlands over smaller ones, even though the ecological landscape presents a different view: Larger doesn't mean better," says Semlitsch.