There's no comic-book hero I know of whose origin story begins, "I was lying in a swampy forest when suddenly, some dirty water trickled onto me."* But with roads and traffic crisscrossing their habitat--and runoff leaking into the pools where they breed and grow--salamanders have had to develop their own superpowers to survive.
Yale researcher Steven Brady recently studied spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) living in range of street runoff. Amphibians such as salamanders or frogs are vulnerable because they divide their time between land and water and can absorb pollutants through their skin. They also have a tendency to develop freakish mutations and alarm school groups. (Or, say, people who are just looking for a nice A. maculatum photo to illustrate a blog post, not a dozen pictures of a salamander with three arms coming out of one shoulder.) How is runoff affecting salamanders that breed in roadside ponds?
Brady ...
