A typical mole salamander, tigers spend most of their life underground.
Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day! Those are 10 words you'll probably never hear Jake or me say. We like amphibians, amphibians like moisture, therefore we welcome rain with the proverbial open arms. Not that we actually have much choice anyway. But on 14 December a wonderful frontal system decided we needed moistening. It pulled into the region on silent feet (meaning very little thunder and lightning) at 0200 hrs and slowly moved over us for the next 30 hrs, dumping as it passed up to 4" of water. So on the evening of 15Dec we went amphibian-ing. We were hoping to see and photo (our cameras love hard rain---not!) at least 3 target species--southern chorus frogs, ornate chorus frogs (more on these 2 anurans in later blogs), and tiger salamanders. We went, we looked, we succeeded--and that was noteworthy because we had failed on earlier occasions. The wonderful eastern tiger salamander, Ambystoma tigrinum, is the largest terrestrial caudatan in the east. Although it has an immense range, occurring from Long Island, New York to Northwest Minnesota, southward to East Texas and Northwest Florida, over much of this range it is of local distribution and the suitable habitats, containing the ephemeral ponds preferred as breeding sites, are being reduced by drought and construction on an almost daily basis. The reduction of the needed habitats, combined with commercial collecting for biological supply houses and the pet trade, can have disastrous and long term results on this species.

Besides the above mentioned problem, increased vehicular traffic has made access to their breeding ponds more hazardous, and in some cases nearly impossible, for tiger salamanders. Speaking for the Florida situation, recent observations seem to indicate that the breeding populations are now comprised of fewer adults, making each remaining individual of paramount importance to the continued success of the increasingly vulnerable populations.