Maine’s vernal Valentine

What does it mean to love? What if you love frogs? It’s getting near to Valentine’s Day and human love expressions abound on the shelves of stores.

A couple of short months later there will be a more aquatic, nonhuman love fest occurring: breeding aggregations of wood frogs, spotted and blue spotted salamanders will remind us that spring is here. Most of us in this wetland-rich state truly love our frogs and salamanders. Vernal pool conservation, though, has been much debated in these pages in recent weeks. Perhaps it is time to turn away from recrimination and learn more about this landscape we all love.

Vernal pools are small (usually less than an acre), seasonal ponds that are the nuclei of a surprising amount of life in the still-frigid early spring months of Maine. Vernal pools fill up in the late fall and winter and during the spring as melting snow and ice flow. Following this melt come the wood frogs, emerging from shallow leafy hibernacula on the forest floor, where they were tucked nearly frozen since early winter.

They wait for an early spring rain, and then move with remarkable homing ability through the woods and dark of night for hundreds of yards to the pool in which they themselves were most likely hatched. There, they join chorusing males and egg-laden females and after a few frothy days, leave behind their eggs. The eggs then develop into wiggly larvae over a few weeks and emerge as tadpoles to engage in a feeding frenzy and predator-avoidance lottery while they race against time to develop adult characteristics and metamorphose into tiny froglets before their temporary wetland womb dries out.

At that fateful point – mid-summer – successful froglets hop away from their natal pools to enter the second phase of their life: terrestrial forest-dwelling animal, hunting insects and staying moist on the forest floor. The wood frog is an icon of true Maine: a long, cold winter endured with patience and panache (how ’bout if you could shut down your metabolism, freeze your intercellular spaces, bury yourself just under the leaves, and emerge singing and ready to party?).

Like any Mainer, the salamander is a creature of vocal reserve. It does not sing. The spotted salamander has a rich indigo background, splashed with bright yellow spots. Under the tannin-rich waters of vernal pools, they court, their yellow spots appearing as spinning constellations under the beam of a flashlight – if you’re lucky enough. Blue spotted salamanders have a subtler charm: blue spots on a brownish-indigo background. Their genetics are more complicated than the Maine coast, resulting in different colors and body shapes.

Salamanders (these are called mole salamanders because they live in – but don’t make – burrows) emerge throughout the spring. They move from deep underground burrows (below the frost line – these animals don’t freeze themselves) to the same breeding pools as their drab but more vocally romantic frog cousins. Once at the pools, mole salamanders engage in a subtle underwater dance over deposited piles of – you guessed it – sperm.

So, in early spring a visitor to a productive vernal pool might get sung to (actually quacked at, because wood frogs sound a lot like black ducks), and underwater danced for – certainly a lot of love going on. Viewed as fellow travelers on our seasonal road, perhaps we can empathize just a bit.

Love, after all, is about giving up a little of the self. It might be hard to love a frog or a salamander, especially if their protection means giving up some acres of land. But if you know a little about them – and dozens of Mainers I have worked with over the past five years surely know quite a bit about them – then you can try to protect them – and you do.

While all vernal pools serve valuable ecological functions (e.g., flood control), only a portion are critical for maintaining amphibian populations. The state has new guidelines for identifying these biologically significant pools. Trained vernal pool ecologists may help landowners understand how to best protect this lovely resource.

Vernal pool protection does not mean an end to development. In fact, it may provide a framework for ecologically sensitive development. Pool-breeding amphibians will be best protected by systematically evaluating the resource using mapping technology and field visits, selecting the most productive breeding pools, and building a system of connected neighboring forest and wetland habitats. In the interstices of this network, it will be possible to do development.

Rob Baldwin lives in Orono. He is a scientist for 2C1Forest studying land use change and has recently completed a doctoral study on vernal pools.