Inside the effort to save one of America's most imperiled salamanders

Nicole Dahrouge searches for frosted flatwoods salamander eggs in bogs near Tallahassee, Florida. The ground-dwelling salamander is highly imperiled and vulnerable to an extinction vortex where small populations compound their problems. Eggs are laid each fall in ephemeral ponds and require specific winter inundation conditions to hatch. If winter rains do not flood the dry mounds, eggs dry up. As warming shifts weather patterns, successful hatching becomes less likely. Even when eggs hatch into aquatic larvae, survival remains low because many predators consume them. Conservation work aims to increase egg survival and buy time for the species to adapt.

"There's always a bit of urgency collecting frosted flatwoods salamander eggs. The tiny and secretive ground-dwelling salamander is one of the most imperiled amphibians in North America, teetering on the brink of what biologists call an "extinction vortex" the point at which a plant or animal's population is so small that its problems start to fatally compound. Dahrouge's job at the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy (ARC) is to keep the "frosties," as they're lovingly called, from slipping over that precipice to the point of no return; to bolster their population and buy them time to adapt to the fast-changing world."

"Frosted flatwoods salamander eggs require a very specific set of climatic conditions to hatch. They're laid, each fall, in ephemeral ponds; on dry mounds, like the one Dahrouge is circling, that should be inundated by winter's rains. It's an annual gamble for the salamanders. Without inundation, the eggs will dry up. And with weather patterns shifting, as the world warms, it's a wager they're less and less likely to win. Dahrouge is trying to skew the odds."

""It's just like the world's itchiest scavenger hunt interspersed with little periodic injections of serotonin when you find something fun," she says, rubber boots squelching in damp earth. That starts with duck-walking through clingy brush to find their eggs."

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