Salamanders on Fast Track with Evolution

Mark Urban's studies of salamanders show that New England ponds can be hotbeds for evolution.

When Mark Urban was a young boy, he spent his summer days splashing around in muddy ponds looking for salamanders and frogs. Now that he’s an assistant professor in UConn’s ecology and evolutionary biology department, he does … pretty much the same thing. But now his exploration goes beyond the waterways and into his laboratory, where his experiments have shown that neighboring New England ponds can be hotbeds for evolution. Join Professor Urban on an adventure into the swamp, where tiny salamanders fight for survival.