JUVENILE MOVEMENTS AND POTENTIAL INTER-AGE CLASS ASSOCIATIONS OF RED-BACKED SALAMANDERS

For many taxa, little is known about whether territoriality of adults affects the behavior of juveniles. Laboratory research has shown that aggression of adult territorial red-backed salamanders (Plethodon cinereus) decreases with familiarity, but it is not clear whether juveniles are randomly or nonrandomly associated with adult or parental territories. Using data from mark-recapture surveys, we compared the number of captures of first-year juveniles and adults of P. cinereus to ambient meteorological data. We found no evidence for temporal separation of foraging; weather conditions did not affect the proportion of first-year juveniles captured. We then conducted nearest-neighbor analyses to evaluate whether first-year juveniles were spatially associated with or disassociated from adult home ranges. Juveniles were neither closer to nor further away from adults than would be expected by random chance. Nearest-neighbor distances also were not significantly different from the mean radius of adult home ranges. There was no evidence that the distribution of adult home ranges affected the distribution of juveniles, at least after recent rainfall events; there is a possibility that interactions between age classes may occur under drier conditions.