Diet of the Black Mountain Salamander (Desmognathus welteri) in Southeastern Kentucky

摘要

Salamanders play an important role in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in eastern North America. Semi-aquatic salamanders are known to account for the majority of the vertebrate biomass in certain low-order stream ecosystems (Hairston 1987; Petranka and Murray 2001) where they efficiently assimilate energy and nutrients into biomass, converting 60% of the food they consume into growth and reproduction (Hairston 1987). Furthermore, stream salamanders often feed in both aquatic and terrestrial habitats, essentially linking aquatic and terrestrial food webs. Because of their substantial biomass and foraging breadth, stream salamanders can regulate both freshwater and terrestrial macroinvertebrate communities through top-down effects in food webs, which in turn influence ecosystem functions such as detritus processing and nutrient cycling (Keitzer and Goforth 2013).