Estimating the effects of road-kills on the Fire Salamander population along a river

Iftah Sinai, Talya Oron, Gilad Weil, Roni Sachal, Avi Koplovich, Leon Blaustein, Alan R. Templeton, Lior Blank

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A number of factors contribute to the process of amphibian decline, among them population fragmentation and road-kills. In this work we evaluated the effects of a road that separates the hibernation area of the Fire Salamander population from their breeding site on the demography and movement behavior. For that we monitored the population for four years using transects along the road and along a river that runs in parallel to the road and serve as the breeding site. We found that the estimated percent of the population killed on the road steadily increased minimally from 2.56 % to 10.78 % over a four year period of increasing vehicular activity. Interestingly, only a small number of individuals were documented on both sides of the road, suggesting there is a potential for population fragmentation due to the road. Additionally, we used geostatistics to reveal that the spatial distribution pattern of the population and road-kills along the road is not random. Thus, conservation efforts that focus on preventing salamanders from accessing the road surface should focus on the areas where the population and road-kills aggregate.

Original languageEnglish
Article number125917
JournalJournal for Nature Conservation
Volume58
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier GmbH

Keywords

  • Amphibian
  • Fragmentation
  • Hotspot analysis
  • Migration
  • Road-kill

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ecology
  • Nature and Landscape Conservation

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