Salamander Scholar

Kennesaw State biology professor sees conservation as key goal of salamander research

By Kennesaw State University

April 1^st, 2022

Todd Pierson considers himself a muddy-boots ecologist. The assistant professor of biology brought his love of creeks, forests and amphibians to Kennesaw State University to shed light on the lives of Appalachian salamanders.

“For better or worse, I think about salamanders all the time,” Pierson said. “Fortunately, they’re ecologically important, and they’re great models for evolutionary processes, so they’re interesting to conservationists, scientists and researchers.”

Since arriving at KSU’s College of Science and Mathematics in Fall 2020, Pierson and his students have looked in streams and under rocks and logs for salamanders to study. Some of them fit on a fingertip; others coil like snakes in the palm of a hand. Some display brilliant colors, while others blend in with their surroundings.

All of them are critical to a healthy ecosystem, Pierson said.

“As both predators and prey, salamanders are key parts of how energy and nutrients move through ecosystems,” he said. “And there are sometimes thousands of them in an average forest or stream. If you want to understand how both urban and rural ecosystems work, you really have to understand salamanders.”

Salamanders prey upon worms, crickets, mosquito larvae and more. On the other hand, salamanders make up part of the diet of various fish, birds, snakes, raccoons and other small animals.

Biologists first discovered the secretive and rare patch-nosed salamander in several Georgia streams in 2007, and Pierson and his colleagues have since turned to "environmental DNA" analysis of the water to find new places where this species lives. This work led Pierson to add other DNA-driven laboratory work to his field research. Today, Pierson’s lab also houses several projects that use genetic data to study the hybridization, or crossbreeding, of different salamander species.

This is where the muddy boots he wears in the field come off and the lab coat goes on.

“I never thought in my education I would end up in a molecular lab,” Pierson said. “But DNA offers the right tools to answer the basic questions in the ecology of these animals. It helps us plan for their conservation, which is a major goal of our research.”

All around Pierson’s lab, salamanders are stored in plastic drawers equipped with wet paper towels and other necessities for creating a salamander habitat. When Pierson and his students study courtship behaviors, they’ll record the rituals with a small video camera and then move the females to aquariums with water and gravel, ideal for laying eggs.

For all these lines of inquiry, Pierson said he could do his research best in this part of the world. He grew up in Indiana but earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia and his Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee. Between those two places, he learned the Appalachian region is the world’s hotspot for salamander diversity and jumped at the chance to join the faculty at Kennesaw State.

“My research program is very focused regionally on these salamanders that live here in the Southern Appalachian Mountains,” he said. "Kennesaw State has everything I want in a place where I can do my research. There’s support for teaching and research in the lab, and there are local field sites where I can take my students out to catch salamanders and observe them in the field, and there are fantastic undergraduate and graduate students to work with.”