It takes many hands to study and reintroduce the stiped newt into its historic home range.
In late January Tall Timbers welcomed over twenty-five members of the Striped Newt Working Group.
During the two-day meeting the contingent of biologists discussed future paths for research and reintroduction of striped newt populations.
The group is comprised of three research institutions, eight zoological institutions, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission, U.S. Forest Service, the University of Florida and the University of Georgia.
Tall Timbers involvement in this group includes researching the last functional Florida population of striped newts in the “western clade.” This population is found on the Tall Timbers owned and managed property, Livingston Place in Jefferson County.
Work on the site is focused on newt disease study and research into how a wetland’s vegetative makeup can influence newt populations.
Tall Timbers partnered with Arik Hartmann at the University of Florida to investigate the level of pathogen presence in wetlands where our striped newts are found.
The Striped Newt Working Group met at Tall Timbers in January
This work found that, although a variety of amphibian pathogens are present including Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, Perkinsea, and Ranavirus, the striped newt population seems robust enough to combat these pathogens.
This is likely due to the quality habitat conditions of the wetland; being frequently burned, open and grassy and composed of a diverse herbaceous plant community.
The diversity also extends to the other species of amphibians that exist in the wetland, perhaps creating pathogen dilution due to the high populations and several other species that also reside in these wetlands.
Tall Timbers’ Biological Monitoring Coordinator Kim Sash and FWC Biologist, Pierson Hill are also documenting the vegetation composition in the wetlands at Livingston Place. A diverse plant assemblage in the wetlands seems to be one of the driving factors of whether or not striped newts are present.
The striped newt population at Livingston Place has also created some of the assurance colonies with our zoological partners on the striped newt project (Jacksonville Zoo, Detroit Zoo, Atlanta Botanical Gardens, Central Florida Zoo, Amphibian Foundation, Zoo Tampa, and soon Disney Animal Kingdom).
These colonies consist of breeding pairs that produce young each year for reintroduction into the wild.
Most of these releases have occurred in the Apalachicola National Forest through partnerships with the U.S. Forest Service and the Coastal Plains Institute.
Recently, we’ve added the Jones Center at Ichauway in Baker county, Georgia as another release site.
Striped newts historically occurred on Ichauway, but recent surveys indicate they are no longer present on the property.
Through this partnership and assistance from the UGA we have released over 120 striped newts bred at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens into wetlands on Ichauway over the last year.
We will continue these releases into the future.
Future goals of the working group include investigating newt response to different environments in a captive situation.
Once a striped newt hatches from an underwater egg and becomes larva (sort of like a tadpole) after several months of living in the wetland and growing it has several options of what it wants to be when it matures.
It can turn into an aquatic reproductive adult (a paedomorph), a reproductive terrestrial adult, or a non-reproductive terrestrial eft.
What we are not sure of is why a newt makes the “decision” it does – is it because of lack of food resources, a drying wetland, competition from other newts or something we have not thought of yet.
Therefore, given their unique life history we want to test some of these hypotheses so we can better understand the striped newt’s ecology and increase our success at reintroductions.
Most importantly this project has thus far been a success because we have committed partners that all have one goal in mind, more striped newts on the landscape, especially on properties where they were once documented to exist.
Read more about the discovery of striped newts on Livingston Place here
