Abstract

We used radiotelemetry and recapture to monitor survival and body condition of 36 captive-reared Ozark Hellbenders (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis bishopi) released at two sites on the North Fork of the White River, Missouri, from May 2008 to August 2009. At the end of our study 16 salamanders were alive, 13 had died, and the fate of seven could not be determined. Captive-reared hellbenders released at a site with densely arranged boulders exhibited approximately 1.5-fold higher annual survival (0.7467; daily survival = 0.9992 ± 0.0004 95% CI) than hellbenders released at a site where boulders were patchily distributed (0.4816; daily survival = 0.9980 ± 0.0007 95% CI). When compared to log-transformed length–mass relationships developed for wild hellbenders from the same river in the 1970s, mean body condition of hellbenders at the patchy boulder site was about average at the end of the study (mean residual distance = −0.0273 ± 0.0234 SE, n = 7; range = −0.1375–0.0486), while mean body condition o...

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