In a recently published paper Wang et al. (2021) studied the movement of critically endangered Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus). The behavior remains poorly understood due to the rareness of wild individuals of this species. Their study focused on movement after reintroduction, especially the abiotic and biotic influences that affect its movement. The authors used pilot reintroduction projects as opportunities to fill in some knowledge gaps on their movement ecology. They released 31 juvenile captive-reared Chinese giant salamanders of two age groups in two rivers in the Qinling Mountains of central China and monitored their daily movements for 16 months using surgically implanted radio transmitters. They examined the impacts of individual traits (body mass, body condition) and environmental conditions (temperature, precipitation, and moon phase) on their daily movement patterns. Data were analyzed using a mixed-effects logistic regression model to understand the drivers of their movement tendency (i.e., whether they move or not) and a linear mixed-effects model was used to understand the drivers of their movement distance. They found that movement tendency of the older salamander cohort was positively affected by the moon phase, increasing near the Full Moon, whereas the younger cohort of animals were not impacted by the moon phase. For daily distance moved, they found temperature had a strong positive effect on both cohorts, whereas precipitation had moderate but opposite effects on the two cohorts Body mass and body condition did not have any significant impacts on either age classes’ movement tendency or distance.
Wang Q, Zhang L, Zhao H, Zhao Q, Deng J, Kong F, Jiang W, Zhang H, Liu H, Kouba A. Abiotic and Biotic Influences on the Movement of Reintroduced Chinese Giant Salamanders (Andrias davidianus) in Two Montane Rivers. Animals. 2021 Jun;11(6):1480.
