These "mole salamanders" embark on quite an adventure in their short lives! Adults only spend a few days of every year in their breeding pools. The eggs hatch in the ponds and the emerging larvae spend the summer feeding in the temporary pools before they metamorphosize into salamanders. In early fall, they disperse to the surrounding or neighbouring forest where they spend the remainder of the year on or below the forest floor, foraging in an underground tunnel system. These travels have become more perilous in the past half century with the proliferation of roads throughout rural Toronto, bisecting and carving up once continuous forested landscapes.
