Small-Mouthed Salamander (Ambystoma texanum)
Description: The small-mouth salamander grows from 4.5 to 7.0 in. It is typically black or dark brown in color with light-grey or silvery-colored flecking, or grey blotching. It has a fairly small head, relative to its body, and a long tail. Males are typically smaller than females. Their bellies are black, often with tiny flecks, and have 14 to 15 costal grooves.
Habitat: Small-mouth salamanders live in moist pine woodlands and deciduous forest bottomlands, tallgrass prairies, farming areas, near temporary ponds, and along streams.
Range: Their range is from western West Virginia south to the Gulf of Mexico, west to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Diet: Their diets include insects, slugs, and earthworms.
Reproduction: Breeding occurs in the spring, with groups of salamanders congregating near the water. Females can lay up to 700 eggs, which they attach in small clumps of up to 30 eggs at a time, to rocks or vegetation under the water. Larvae hatch at 0.5 inch; they metamorphose in May to June at about 1.6 inches.
Status: Listed as Least Concern in view of the large extent of occurrence, large number of sub-populations and locations, large population size and use of a wide range of habitats.
»» Kingdom: Animalia - Animals
»» Phylum: Chordata - Chordates
»» Subphylum: Vertebrata - Vertebrates
»» Class: Amphibia - (Amphibians)
»» Order: Caudata - Salamanders
»» Family: Salamandridae - Newts
»» Subfamily: Pleurodelinae - Pleurodeline Newts
»» Genus: Ambystoma
»» Species: Ambystoma texanum - Small-Mouthed Salamander
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Small-Mouthed Salamander", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0. Content may have been omitted from the original, but no content has been changed or extended.
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