Upland Habitat Quality and Historic Landscape Composition Influence Genetic Variation of a Pond-Breeding Salamander

Abstract

Understanding the temporal and spatial scale at which habitat alteration impacts populations is important for conservation and management. Amphibians have declined more than other vertebrates, and pond-breeding species are particularly susceptible to habitat loss and fragmentation because they have terrestrial and aquatic life stages. One approach to management of pond-breeding species is protection of core upland habitat surrounding the breeding pond. We used genetic variation as an indicator of population status in a common amphibian species, spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum), to determine how amount of suitable upland habitat relates to population status in the greater Charlotte, North Carolina, USA metropolitan area. We developed candidate models to evaluate the relative influence of historical and contemporary forested habitat availability on population genetic variation at two spatial scales of upland area (164 m and 2000 m) at four time intervals over the past seven decades (1938, 1978, 1993, 2005). We found that historical land cover best predicted contemporary allelic richness. Inbreeding coefficient and observed heterozygosity were not effectively predicted by forest cover at either spatial or temporal scales. Allelic richness was best predicted at the smaller spatial scale in the 1993 time interval. Predicting and understanding how future landscape configuration affects genetic OPEN ACCESS Diversity 2013, 5 725 variation of common and rare species is imperative for the conservation of amphibian and other wildlife populations.

Creating Successful Vernal Pools: A Literature Review and Advice for Practitioners

“…Frogs typically travel farther than salamanders, and females generally travel farther than males (Regosin et al 2003;Rittenhouse and Semlitsch 2007). Although it is not usually feasible for a mitigation project to control habitat quality at these distances, the constraints imposed by this larger landscape perspective should be recognized because landscape context is crucial to the functioning of pools (see Kentula 2000;Zedler 2000;Regosin et al 2005;Julian 2009;Gardner et al 2007) and to preserve local genetic diversity (Gibbs and Reed 2008;Richter et al 2013b). Many researchers have documented that amphibians are particularly sensitive to pool context and quality of the surrounding habitat (Kolozsvary and Swihart 1999;Lehtinen et al 1999;Guerry and Hunter 2002;Babbitt et al 2009;Simon et al 2009).…”