Meeting Abstract
Good competitors will be able to effectively reduce both interspecific and intraspecific competition by developing life strategies to limit competitive interactions. These life strategies partition resources through generalistic behaviors, territorial behavior, and ontogenetic shifts in diet or habitat. It is essential that Plethodontid salamanders exhibit these life strategies in order to be well-suited competitors because they are vulnerable to environmental stressors due to their unique physiology. Plethodon cinereus seem to be good competitors due to their relatively high abundance and wide geographic distribution. We studied the life strategies that help P. cinereus reduce interspecific and intraspecific competition by means of diet selectivity and diet change between age classes. We hypothesized that P. cinereus would be generalists and exhibit an ontogenetic shift in diet which would classify the species as good competitors. We analyzed the invertebrate community of three varying vegetation types and compared the available prey to the gut contents of adult salamanders. Red-backed salamanders can be classified as generalists because the abundance of invertebrates in the gut contents correlated with the abundance of invertebrates available at each vegetation type. Plethodon cinereus does not experience ontogenetic shift when analyzing shifts in weight and percent weight of invertebrate orders between age classes. The red-backed salamander may not need to reduce intraspecific competition through ontogenetic diet shift because of its territorial behavior. This approach to analyze competitor suitability can be used to relatively compare species by assessing their ability to reduce interspecific and intraspecific competition. Further refining this method can be applied to conservation efforts as well as species risk assessments.
