Alexander Levesque
My current research focuses on the physiological responses to elevated temperatures of two sympatric salamanders. Spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) and blue-spotted salamanders (A. laterale) each inhabit a latitudinally broad distribution and encounter a diverse array of thermal regimes across their individual ranges.
As larvae, they are aquatic and normally inhabit vernal pools - thus, they are likely to experience heat extremes as they develop over the summer. After metamorphosis, they are semi-fossorial and have a greater ability to escape heat extremes by going underground. Does that, then, negate the need to maintain the physiological response to warming acquired during the larval stage? I am currently raising larvae from wild-collected eggs to understand how elevated temperatures in the larval stage affect post-metamorphic thermal tolerance and performance - and whether we might detect differences between a more northernly (A. laterale) or southernly (A. maculatum) distributed species. Above picture: Ambystoma cf. laterale (possibly a member of the unisexual A. jeffersonianum - laterale complex) in Buckhorn, Ontario, September 2025. Education M.Sc. Biology - Concordia University, 2026 B.Sc. Life Sciences - University of Toronto, 2023 |
|