Survival of Salamanders in a Severe Flood Event in Louisiana

In August 2016, a park of roughly 200 ha of bottomland hardwood forest in East Baton Rouge Parish, LA, was inundated by up to 5.28 m of water for 5 days in one of southeast Louisiana's most severe floods in recorded history. Here, I document post-flood observations of a terrestrial salamander species at the park, Ambystoma opacum (Marbled Salamander). To my knowledge, this is the first documentation of survival of terrestrial salamanders after a freshwater flood event. As such floods are predicted to increase in frequency in the future, it is encouraging that salamanders may be able to tolerate such changes to some extent.