We’re excited about a second season of Snapshots in Time, our Citizen Science Initiative for Wood Frog and Spotted Salamander breeding. We thought we would present a brief summary of the data from 2014 to kick off the 2015 season.

Our first “season” of snapshots generated an even 100 observations with most observations in February, March and April, but some were submitted before and after that time. We had slightly more observations for Wood Frogs than Spotted Salamanders, and eggs and adults were by far the most common type of observation. In comparison, larvae and metamorphs made up less than 15 percent of total observations.

Another pattern that we saw was that most of our sightings were concentrated in the South, with North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky providing the most observations. All other states had less than five observations, and we lacked records from several northeastern states and all Canadian provinces. Our future goal is to maintain our high level of southern observers while bringing in more observations from the northern states. To help

Pho

to: P

ete

Oxf

ord

SNAPSHOTSin Time

Pho

to: T

od

d P

iers

on

page 1

observers plan the times when they look for these species, we’ve also included a map of typical breeding times by state for these species.

Finally, one thing that we’d like to reiterate is the importance of cleaning your boots and other gear between sites so as to not spread disease. I suspect a lot of you already do this anyway, but Northeast PARC has a nice disinfection protocol that you can follow that can be found at this web address: http://www.northeastparc.org/products/pdfs/NEPARC_Pub_2014-02_Disinfection_Protocol.pdf

Thank you for all you do, and we look forward to hearing from you with amphibian observations! And please let us know if you ever have questions about the project.

TOTAL OBSERVATIONS

LOCATIONS OF OBSERVATIONSTYPICAL BREEDING TIMES

OBSERVATIONS BY LIFE STAGE

page 2