Beleaguered Salamanders Now Plagued by Deformities

Kansas City InfoZine ^ | 6/26/2005 | Jim Low

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

"Second, with the recent ruling on eminent domain, if government decided to "purchase" the area for development purposes, what concerns will they have about the thing?"

Pollution, murders, abortions... are decreasing.

[Old Professer]

Nobody ran out of gas twice until gas gauges were invented.

[GreenFreeper]

Pollution, murders, abortions... are decreasing

....as are hellbenders and other herps.

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Please remove me from your ping list.

[GreenFreeper]

Well graphs and charts can be misleading. Looked at a different scale, current extinction rates don't look so troubling.

Figure 2.2 (above): Extinction rate of "shelly" marine invertebrates through the Phanerozoic (based on Sepkoski, 1997) showing the same continental flood basalt events as in Fig. 2.1.

There are five extinction events in earth history that stand out as the most significant short-lived episodes of intense extinction ≠ commonly referred to as the åbig five.π They are the end-Ordovician, the Late Devonian, the end-Permian, the end-Triassic and the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T. Although the K-T event is the most well known, the most significant event by far is the end-Permian, during which up to 90% of species went extinct (up to 96% according to Raup, 1979 ≠ calculated by reverse rarefaction from 52% of observed families becoming extinct).

[editor-surveyor]

"And used engine oil will kill most skin breathers if you paint them with it."

What a useful bit of information (??)

[Old Professer]

That's exactly how they tested used oil to determine its carcinogenicity on shaved rats.

[RightWingAtheist]

I agree, and I think these are best done at the state/municipal level. Some federal oversight is clearly necessary, but the best solutions are not the same for every region, given both the physical and economic circumstances.

There was a news article last month about how Canada is trying to fulfill the desired outcomes of the Kyoto protocol by converting to more hydroelectric projects. Unfortunately, the plans, as they currently exist, would be severly damaging to many already-endangered fish populations. The conservative response to misguided policies like Kyoto should not be the denial of global warming, CO2 pollution, or other verified instances of man-man ecological damage, but careful assesments of the economic and ecological consequences of interventionist policy. Otherwise we'll wind up with the ecological equivalent of the Great Society: good-intentioned big government programs which exacerbate the problem they were intended to solve, with possible disastrous consequences.

[RightWingAtheist]

This may be a dumb question, but: have the relative sizes of amphibians been used as a way to calculate global or regional warming? I know that higher temperatures are supposed to favor larger sizes in animals, particularly reptiles and amphibians. Apparently, some large labyrinthodonts managed to survive in Australia well into the Eocene, long after most of them had died out in the Permian extinction, and maybe the relatively stable warm periods there throughout those hundreds of millions of years contributed to their survival there.

[GreenFreeper]

have the relative sizes of amphibians been used as a way to calculate global or regional warming?

Not that I'm aware of. I'm not all that familar with increasing relative body sizes with increasing temperatures in a historical context... but I have read no reports (nor any anecdotal evidence) of herps increasing in size in response to temp. I know mammals show a reverse trend. My guess is that any climate change/body size correlation would be indirect (ie increase temps also increased food availability). Also, maybe increased temps would create different selection pressures- select for larger body size? Either way, this trend would occur slowly and be hard to determine within a reasonable time frame. Not too mention the other, potentially more influential environmental various such as moist, UVB, etc. Definitely would be interesting to look at though.

[theFIRMbss]

>"And used engine oil will kill most skin breathers if you paint them with it."
>>What a useful bit of information (??)

Old Professor has
seen Goldfinger so often
it colors his mind . . .

[Old Professer]

Google Bruce Ames and read of his excoriation when he repented of his sins of scientific suffusion...

[cantthinkof1]

My problem is with the thinking "what is one more," is that if we don't do anything, what good does that do? All we do is loose another animal. Why we should turn a cold shoulder to our earth is foolish, and we should try to preserve anything, especially if we are the ones causing the problems.

What good is a float trip if I can't see such a cool creature that I've heard so much about. (I found this little chat looking for info about my trip)

Also, one reason for the decrease in Hellbender populations I've discovered is the introduction of trout into rivers, and trout and frogs/salamanders do not mix.