| Marbled salamander | |
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Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Amphibia |
| Order: | Urodela |
| Family: | Ambystomatidae |
| Genus: | Ambystoma |
| Species: | A. opacum |
| Binomial name | |
| Ambystoma opacum (Gravenhorst, 1807) | |
The marbled salamander (Ambystoma opacum) is a species of mole salamander found in the eastern United States.
The marbled salamander is a stout, black and white banded salamander. It exhibits sexual dimorphism with bands of females tending to be light gray, while those of males are bright white. Males also have a larger proportion of white dorsal surface area relative to females. [2] Females have been reported to have more asymmetrical dorsal markings, while the males have more symmetrical markings. [3] Like all salamanders, they go through metamorphosis including an aquatic life stage. Juveniles have white flecks that eventually develop into bands as they reach adulthood. [4] Adults can grow to about 11 cm (4 in), small compared to other members of its genus. Like most of the mole salamanders, it is secretive, spending most of its life under logs or in burrows.
Marbled salamanders are found in the eastern United States, from southern New England to northern Florida, and west to Illinois and Texas. Their habitats are damp woodlands, forests, and places with soft and wet soil. Seasonally flooded areas are essential for breeding, but the adult salamanders are terrestrial. Like many salamanders, marbled salamanders have poison glands to deter predators. [5]
The marbled salamander is the state salamander of North Carolina. [6]
The first months that Marbled Salamanders spend living out of the water are the most important in determining how many will survive until the next breeding season. [7] Marbled Salamanders are not strong burrowers, therefore they rely on existing holes in the ground for shelter. [7] Desiccation, heat stress, soil moisture, temperature, and pH are all important factors in determining if a Marbled Salamander will survive. [7] Chances of survival are low for Marbled Salamanders who travel through fields, however, they have been observed to traverse fields in order to find other pond areas. [7] Marbled Salamanders survive best in a forest habitat, compared to an open field. [8] [7] Protecting wetlands is key to the survival of this species. [8] Conservationists recommend leaving a buffer zone of forest around wetlands to increase survivorship of Marbled Salamanders. [7] Male marbled salamanders have also been shown to have a higher survivorship than females. [9] Marbled Salamanders in the northern portions of their range can also go into a state of torpor to survive the cold months. [10]
Adults spend most of their time in their burrows or under logs, as is the case with most mole salamanders. Juvenile marbled salamanders hatch early compared to most salamanders and gain a size advantage by feeding and growing for several months before the Jefferson salamanders and spotted salamanders hatch later in the spring. Larvae typically mature as quickly as two months in the southern part of their range, but take up to six months to mature in the northern part. Marbled salamanders, like other members of this genus, are reported to have relatively long life spans, 8–10 years or more.
Marbled salamanders will migrate to seasonal pond basins in the late summer and early fall where they will court and deposit eggs. [11] Courtship of this species takes place on land. The males will compete by butting heads and blocking another male’s movement with its tail. When courting the female, a male will nudge the vent of a female with its snout, with the intent that the female will respond in kind. This back-and-forth nudging has the appearance of a dance as the two salamanders circle around one another. This display culminates with the male depositing a spermatophore and the female moving to take it into her cloaca. The female will then lay between 50 and 200 eggs, often remaining with them until the nest floods. [12] One fairly unique parental care behavioral characteristic [13] of Marbled Salamanders is that when the mothers stay with their eggs, wrapping their bodies around the eggs to form a bowl shape to collect water over the eggs. Water must make extended contact with the eggs in order for them to begin hatching. [14]
However, it has been observed that females may abandon their eggs before flooding occurs. [15] Female Marbled Salamanders have a very low attachment to their eggs, and they will abandon their nest after a disturbance. [15] They have also been observed to abandon undisturbed nests. [15] When the mother leaves the nest, she leaves the eggs vulnerable to predation by other salamanders, frogs, and beetles. [15]
Reproductive success is highly variable for the Marbled Salamander. [8] Some years many juveniles will survive, while other years the breeding population may experience a catastrophic failure, and very few juveniles will survive. [8] These catastrophic failures occur randomly, but it has been found that they are mainly influenced by the length of the hydroperiod. [8] A short hydroperiod is the main cause of catastrophic failure. [8] Because Marbled Salamanders have relatively long life spans, their chances of extinction due to catastrophic failure are low. [8] If they do not breed successfully one year, they will be alive the next year to try again. [8] However, if there are other complications affecting their survival, the possibility of a catastrophic failure poses a larger threat to the overall population. [8] Surviving on land, outside of the reproduction season, is very important to keep the population stable. [8]
While most Marbled Salamanders return to the pond where they were born to breed, some may travel over 1,000 meters to locate a new pond to breed. [16] This often occurs when their natal pond has a small population that may not have a large selection of mates. [16] This dispersal helps populations of Marbled Salamanders to avoid genetic problems, by introducing new genes into the population. [16] This dispersal also means that it is important to view these populations as a larger metapopulation, rather than focusing simply on a single wetland area. [16]
Larval salamanders have been found to be positively phototactic until fully developing their rear legs, at which point they switch and become negatively phototactic. [17]
Adults feed on terrestrial invertebrates, such as worms, insects, centipedes, other arthropods, [18] and mollusks (snails, slugs). Larvae feed on small aquatic animals (zooplankton, mainly copepods and cladocerans), [19] but larger individuals will eat larger crustaceans (isopods, fairy shrimp), aquatic insects, snails, oligochaete worms, [19] and eggs and larvae of other amphibians, as well.
Marbled Salamanders are considered a keystone predator because they alter the competitive ability of their prey, allowing other species of prey to thrive. [20]
When A. opacum is under attack by a predator, they often exhibit tail lashing, head-butting, body coiling, or potentially becoming immobile. These defensive moves are thought to draw attention to the tail, which has granular glands that produce noxious secretions to protect themselves. While some predators have learned to eat the body of Marbled Salamanders and leave the tail, this is still a deterrent for many predators. A problem with the granular glands Marbled Salamanders possess is that secretions are reduced after multiple attacks, making them more vulnerable. [21]
Marbled salamanders have been found to exhibit prominent biofluorescence under ultraviolet excitation along the bones in their digits and in the cloacal region of both males and females. [22] The also have mucus-like secretions that florescence green. [23] It is theorized that biofluorescence may aid in sexual selection, mimicry, camouflage, and communication. [24] [25] [26]
Amphibians are ectothermic, anamniotic, four-limbed vertebrate animals that constitute the class Amphibia. In its broadest sense, it is a paraphyletic group encompassing all tetrapods excluding the amniotes. All extant (living) amphibians belong to the monophyletic subclass Lissamphibia, with three living orders: Anura, Urodela (salamanders), and Gymnophiona (caecilians). Evolved to be mostly semiaquatic, amphibians have adapted to inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living in freshwater, wetland or terrestrial ecosystems. Their life cycle typically starts out as aquatic larvae with gills known as tadpoles, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this.
Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten extant salamander families are grouped together under the order Urodela from the group Caudata. Urodela is a scientific Latin term based on the Ancient Greek οὐρά δήλη: ourà dēlē "conspicuous tail". Caudata is the Latin for "tailed ones", from cauda: "tail".
The tiger salamander is a species of mole salamander and one of the largest terrestrial salamanders in North America.
The spotted salamander or yellow-spotted salamander is a mole salamander common in eastern United States and Canada. It is the state amphibian of Ohio and South Carolina. The species ranges from Nova Scotia, to Lake Superior, to southern Georgia and Texas. Its embryos have been found to have symbiotic algae living in and around them, the only known example of vertebrate cells hosting an endosymbiont microbe.
The northern crested newt, great crested newt or warty newt is a newt species native to Great Britain, northern and central continental Europe and parts of Western Siberia. It is a large newt, with females growing up to 16 cm (6.3 in) long. Its back and sides are dark brown, while the belly is yellow to orange with dark blotches. Males develop a conspicuous jagged crest on their back and tail during the breeding season.
The Jefferson salamander is a mole salamander native to the northeastern United States, southern and central Ontario, and southwestern Quebec. It was named after Jefferson College in Pennsylvania.
Eastern newts are 1'inch long in length. These animals are common aquarium pets, being either collected from the wild or sold commercially. The striking bright orange juvenile stage, which is land-dwelling, is known as a red eft. Some sources blend the general name of the species and that of the red-spotted newt subspecies into the eastern red-spotted newt.
The blue-spotted salamander is a mole salamander native to the Great Lakes states and northeastern United States, and parts of Ontario and Quebec in Canada. Their range is known to extend to James Bay to the north, and southeastern Manitoba to the west.
Triturus is a genus of newts comprising the crested and the marbled newts, which are found from Great Britain through most of continental Europe to westernmost Siberia, Anatolia, and the Caspian Sea region. Their English names refer to their appearance: marbled newts have a green–black colour pattern, while the males of crested newts, which are dark brown with a yellow or orange underside, develop a conspicuous jagged seam on their back and tail during their breeding phase.
The ringed salamander is a species of mole salamander native to hardwood and mixed hardwood-pine forested areas in and around the Ozark Plateau and Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. This species of salamander has slander body, small head, and long tail. They are usually found to have various dorsal color from dark gray to dark brown. Various close relatives are found such as marbled salamander and spotted salamander. This species of salamander has cannibal behavior especially those in large body size.
The streamside salamander is a species of mole salamander from North America, occurring in several Midwestern states of the US.
The frosted flatwoods salamander is an endangered salamander species native to the Southeastern United States.
The long-toed salamander is a mole salamander in the family Ambystomatidae. This species, typically 4.1–8.9 cm (1.6–3.5 in) long when mature, is characterized by its mottled black, brown, and yellow pigmentation, and its long outer fourth toe on the hind limbs. Analysis of fossil records, genetics, and biogeography suggest A. macrodactylum and A. laterale are descended from a common ancestor that gained access to the western Cordillera with the loss of the mid-continental seaway toward the Paleocene.
The Lake Patzcuaro salamander, locally known as achoque, is a paedomorphic species of salamander found exclusively in Lake Pátzcuaro, a high-altitude lake in the Mexican state of Michoacán. First described in 1870 by Alfredo Dugès, the species is named in honor of the French herpetologist Auguste Duméril. However, the salamander has been used as a food source and an ingredient in traditional medicines by the Purépecha people since the Pre-Columbian era. Ambystoma dumerilii are neotenic, meaning they retain their larval characteristics throughout their entire life. This results in adults that have long, heavily filamented external gills, gill slits lined with tooth-like gill rakers, and caudal fins. When stressed, Ambystoma dumerilii can undergo an incomplete metamorphosis, though this is process significantly decreases their lifespan and is often fatal.
The Santa Cruz long-toed salamander is an endangered subspecies of the long-toed salamander, which is found only close to a few isolated ponds in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties in California. It has a black body, broken yellow or orange irregular striping along its spine, and a tail fin well evolved for swimming. Like other mole salamanders, it is found near pools or slow-moving streams and has a very secretive lifestyle, making it difficult to find.
The lesser siren is a species of aquatic salamander native to the eastern United States and northern Mexico. They are referred to by numerous common names, including two-legged eel, dwarf siren, and mud eel. The specific epithet intermedia denotes their intermediate size, between the greater siren, Siren lacertina, and the dwarf sirens, Pseudobranchus species.
The small-mouth salamander is a species of mole salamander found in the central United States, from the Great Lakes region in Michigan to Nebraska, south to Texas, and east to Tennessee, with a population in Canada, in Pelee, Ontario. It is sometimes referred to as the Texas salamander, porphyry salamander, or the narrow-mouthed salamander. The Kelley's Island salamander was synonymized with A. texanum in 1995.
Ambystoma talpoideum, the mole salamander, is a species of salamander found in much of the eastern and central United States, from Florida to Texas, north to Illinois, east to Kentucky, with isolated populations in Virginia and Indiana. Older sources often refer to this species as the tadpole salamander because some individuals remain in a neotenic state. This salamander lives among the leaf litter on the forest floor, migrating to ponds to breed.
The marbled newt is a mainly terrestrial newt native to western Europe. They are found in the Iberian Peninsula and France, where they typically inhabit mountainous areas.
Salamander congress is a salamander mating ritual which occurs in spring on the Big Night. It is a gathering of salamanders in vernal pools for the purpose of breeding. When male and female salamanders meet in the vernal pools it is called a congress.
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