Experimental Approaches to Advance Hellbender Headstarting

The Eastern Hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis alleganiensis) is a fully aquatic salamander found throughout the eastern United States. Hellbenders require cool, fast-moving rivers and streams with flat rock substrates for shelter. Due to habitat degradation and anthropogenic changes across landscapes, Hellbenders have required intervention programs to reduce extirpation and extinction risks. Over 5000 Hellbenders are found in captive-rearing and breeding programs throughout 15 different states. However, captive-rearing standards vary from facility to facility. 

Currently, Hellbender captive-rearing programs are based on established zoo guidelines that recommend rearing in traditional glass aquaria until they reach releasable mass (~60 g) at approximately three years of age. To achieve releasable size, the guidelines provide density and food availability requirements based on the amount of available floor space of the enclosure. Unfortunately, because these guidelines lack empirical data, it is unclear whether these recommendations are optimizing captive-rearing efforts for Hellbenders and, therefore, optimizing conservation potential. 

There is an overall lack of available information on housing conditions and requirements for Hellbenders outside of intraspecies aggression or cannibalism. Because many facilities use different types of housing conditions, there is substantial variation in the time needed to achieve the release size threshold. Our objectives were to: 1) understand how different raceway sizes impact growth rates of juvenile Hellbenders and 2) understand the effects of density and food availability on larval Hellbender growth. Both of these goals will allow us to develop optimal housing and husbandry standards and optimizing conservation potential within rearing facilities. Our study will build on our current knowledge of Hellbender captive-rearing techniques and provide empirical data to create optimal rearing standards nationwide.