The effects of natural sun exposure on the intensity and distribution of salamander biofluorescence

Abstract

Salamanders have been used in a variety of different experiments to determine the health of various ecosystems. Biofluorescence was recently studied in amphibians in a study done in 2020. Not much is known about all its functions, more studies are needed to fully understand how it works and how it can be affected by environmental factors. Learning more about the functions of salamander biofluorescence could lead to a greater understanding of how pollutants and human impacts can affect salamanders and the health of their ecosystems. This project aimed to focus on tiger salamander biofluorescence and how its distribution and intensity is affected by the exposure of natural sunlight. Unmarked, 2nd year larval salamanders were taken from a single diverse pond to control for any differences among the ponds. The larvae were exposed to three different light treatments being dark, dimmed, and light. Within these light treatments there were also two time treatments that were six and twelve days. Their biofluorescence was photographed before and after the time treatments with a blue excitation light and a 500 nm long- pass filter. All images were quantified using ImageJ. The results from this experiment support the idea that salamander biofluorescence may be partly environmentally dependent and this could provide useful information for future studies to further understand the functions of amphibian biofluorescence. Furthermore, more extensive research into this topic could provide a new indicator of ecosystem health for use in conservation. 2

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