Species composition and habitat correlates of amphibian roadkills in different landscapes of South-Western Poland

During four seasons (years 2000–2004) on 52.3 km of roads with traffic frequencies ranging from 350 to 10 500 vehicles day⁻¹ and crossing diverse habitats in five regions of south-western Poland 3 742 roadkills from 10 amphibian species were recorded. The most frequent road killed species was common toad Bufo bufo (52% of all roadkills), followed by common frog Rana temporaria (12%), green toad Bufo viridis (11%) and moor frog Rana arvalis (3%). For all surveyed roads the roadkill density was positively correlated with the share of woods and the area of ponds. Actual traffic density was a poor predictor of the number of amphibian roadkills in large landscape scale (all surveyed roads). To assess the factors affecting the number of amphibian roadkills in the small landscape scale the Generalized Linear Models (GLZ) were performed between the number of casualties and five habitat variables (area and number of ponds, share of builtup area, open countryside and woodland) for four circular buffer zones (<200 m, <300 m, <400 m, <500 m) around each of the 100-meter sections within 1.8 km of road crossing an area rich in water bodies. The most important variables in GLZ models were the area and number of ponds. These predictors had statistically significant impact on number of roadkills within buffer zones <500 m (area of ponds) and <400 m (number of ponds).