\u201cWith the hotter, drier effects of climate change, fires in the region are expected to grow larger, more severe, and more frequent. This could lead to longer term habitat impacts than what salamander populations experienced historically,\u201d Ardovino says. Because the species\u2019 future is uncertain, she adds that \u201cthe next big question is: why can populations persist in some areas after a fire and not others?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUnderstanding the effects of this contemporary fire on Sacramento Mountain salamanders will be key to developing conservation plans for the species,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2130\/KaitlynWhite1-300x300.jpg\")
Growing up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Ardovino\u2019s weekend hikes along the Blue Ridge Parkway with her dad inspired a growing passion for amphibians and reptiles. When the time came to choose a major as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, wildlife conservation was an easy choice. \u201cI was able to learn so much about the salamander diversity of southern Appalachia,\u201d she says. \u201cFrom there I was hooked!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While working as an AmeriCorps Scientists in Parks technician at Bandelier National Monument in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 2021, Ardovino met Nancy Karraker<\/a>, a professor in URI\u2019s Department of Natural Resources Science<\/a>. They both joined Rachel Loehman, a United States Geological Survey (USGS) Fire Ecologist, in surveying several federally-owned properties throughout northern New Mexico for the endangered Jemez Mountains salamander (Plethodon neomexicanus<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some time later, Ardovino decided to pursue her master’s degree at URI to work with Karraker on another endemic New Mexico salamander: the Sacramento Mountain salamander. She has spent two summers looking for them in the mountains of south-central New Mexico in the Lincoln National Forest alongside undergraduate students Lily Collyer, Noah Goldthwait, Kayla Kleinbauer, and Kaitlyn White as part of URI\u2019s Coastal Fellows <\/a>program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The team hiked in any weather condition, surveying over one hundred sites in total. \u201cOur goal was to evaluate if salamander populations continued to persist at those sites following recent, 21st-century wildfire events, and to quantify the degree to which the burn severity of those fires impacted salamander persistence,\u201d Ardovino says. \u201cWe also conducted surveys at a series of demography sites while PIT-tagging and giving visual implant elastomer tattoos to salamanders as part of a longer term mark-recapture study on the species.\u201d Their work was funded by the USGS, National Park Service, and New Mexico Department of Game and Fish through grants obtained by Karraker and Loehman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI never could have done the work that I did without the amazing work ethic of my undergraduate technicians,\u201d Ardovino adds. \u201cMentoring undergraduate students through the Coastal Fellows program was, by far, the highlight of my graduate school experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Ardovino is presenting her master\u2019s thesis research \u201cOccupancy of a New Mexico endemic salamander across a wildfire burn severity gradient\u201d on December 5, 2024 at 12:30 PM in room 117A of URI\u2019s Coastal Institute building. The public is welcome to attend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Marissa Ardovino, a graduate student in biological and environmental science with a specialization in ecology and ecosystem sciences, researches the Sacramento Mountain salamanders\u2019 response to wildfires and climate change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1089,"featured_media":19833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1089"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19824"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19852,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19824\/revisions\/19852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/cels\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2130\/PrestonKeres6-1.jpg\")