While many mudpuppies unlucky enough to take a hook get left on the ice to die or are dismembered by unappreciative anglers, in some of their native range the creatures are protected. In Iowa necturus maculosus maculosus is listed as a threatened species (recently downgraded from "endangered"), and in Maryland they are of "special concern," primarily due to lost habitat, according to Andrea Gorman Gelder, associate professor of biology at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Gelder's interest in mudpuppies is somewhat transitive--she studies monogenians (flatworms), and there is a species of flatworm known to live only in mudpuppy gills.

This summer, after her students told her of the Belgrade Lakes colony, Gelder sought assistance from Assistant Professor Cathy Bevier, the Colby Biology Department's leading herpetologist, to collect specimens. Bevier, whose primary research interest involves mink frogs, tapped John Loder, a summer resident of Great Pond and self-styled "mudpuppy man," and they succeeded in catching several adult mudpuppies. Gelder was thrilled to find a number of the flatworm specimens, which she catalogued for the Royal History Museum in London.