Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Abstract
We assessed the hazards of the anticoagulants diphacinone and brodifacoum to salamanders of the family Plethodontidae or lungless salamanders. We completed this research in anticipation of an attempt to eradicate the invasive house mouse (Mus musculus) from the Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, California, USA, where the endemic subspecies Farallon arboreal salamander (Aneides lugubris farallonensis) occurs. We exposed live-captured salamanders of 3 species (Aneides lugubris, Ensatina eschscholzii xanthoptica, and Batrachoseps attenuatus) to anticoagulant rodenticides by both oral and dermal exposure routes in laboratories at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, National Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. The amount of exposure was high, simulating a worst-case scenario. There were some deaths (9 of 37 treated salamanders; 24.3% mortality). We did not observe the sublethal effects of weight loss or reduced food (cricket) consumption that has been observed in studies of other taxa (mammals and birds). Skin sloughing and sores on the undersides of certain salamanders exposed to rodenticides as well as some controls left it unclear whether this effect was caused by the anticoagulant. Following trial completion, we analyzed whole bodies of salamanders for rodenticide residues. Residue concentrations were very low (million) when compared with results from some other studies. We concluded that while anticoagulant rodenticide posed some hazards (both lethal and sublethal) to salamanders, the level appears to be relatively low, especially given the very high exposure rates applied in this study compared to the exposure they would encounter in an aerial broadcast of rodenticide baits in an invasive rodent eradication project.
Recommended Citation
Witmer, Gary W. and Volker, Steven F.
(2023)
"An Assessment of the Potential Hazards of Anticoagulant Rodenticides to Plethodontid Salamanders,"
Human–Wildlife Interactions: Vol. 17:
Iss.
2, Article 7.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26077/6b91-6343
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/hwi/vol17/iss2/7
