Nest box work has allowed researchers to better understand hellbender behaviors with their eggs and how that may be impacting their longterm survival.
“High sedimentation rates have been suspected to negatively impact hellbender habitat,” he said. “It can crowd out those crevices that they need under large rocks.” However, that is just one of many probable issues facing the species. “It is probably one of those death-by-a- thousand-cuts sort of situation,” Kaunert add - ed. “Land use change has impacted water quality. There’s emerging pathogens we’ve been watching like chytrid fungus and rhino - virus. There’s been cases of illegal poaching for the pet trade. So there’s been a number of different things that are probably going on.” While he pointed out that scientists don’t necessarily know exactly why hellbenders are declining, they know how they are declining. “That goes back to chronically depressed recruitment and reproduction where the
survival of that younger-sized class just isn’t there,” he said. Studying nest behavior Better understanding that process goes back to Kaunert’s main focus since his work in western Pennsylvania – the nest box. “Basically, these are cement structures that mimic their natural habitat and they offer a novel tool to evaluate trends in reproduc - tion and recruitment in the species,” he said. “We’ve constructed hundreds of these and placed them across historically monitored populations in western PA and basically are using them to collect data on hellbender breeding and nesting behavior, which has been historically impossible or at least very difficult to collect.” These boxes, which include a fitting for underwater cameras, allow Kaunert and his
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