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Wednesday, May 25, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Our only backyard salamander
By Jim Anderson
Correspondent
It’s always a pleasure for
me to come out the back (or
front), step of the porch and
suddenly see a long, slender
amphibian with a bright yel-
low patch on its back madly
scrambling for cover under
the porch.
If that happened to you
some stormy night after
a rain, don’t be surprised,
it’s “our” long-toed sala-
mander, the only native
salamander we have run-
ning around on this side of
the Cascades. According to
local herp expert Al St. John,
it’s known as Ambystoma
macrodactylum.
According to paleontolo-
gists, they originated approxi-
mately 81 million years ago,
in the late Cretaceous.
The body of the long-toed
salamander is usually dusky
dark with a dorsal stripe of
dusky tan, yellow, or olive-
green, which at times can
be seen as broken up into a
series of spots. The sides of
the body can have tiny fine
white or pale blue flecks.
There is no other salamander
in the Northwest that looks
like that.
The long-toed can
be found throughout the
Northwest, almost as far
north as Alaska. It lives at
altitudes from 2,400 feet to
a little over 9,000 feet above
sea level. You can find them
in the sagebrush and juniper
clear up to the summit of Mt.
Bachelor scurrying about in
damp underbrush.
Amphibians and sala-
manders hibernate in winter,
surviving on moisture and
absorbing oxygen through
their skin in the hibernacu-
lum, which is located in damp
soil well below the freeze
line. It cannot move to feed
while hibernating, so it keeps
alive by living off the fat
reserve under the skin and in
the tail. That may not sound
like fun, unless you like to
sleep and not move around
during winter.
Surprisingly, long-toeds
are active when there’s still
frost in the night air; one can
find their eggs in water under
a thin skim of ice on small
ponds. Like many amphib-
ians, the eggs are surrounded
by a transparent, gelatinous
capsule, making the embryo
visible during development.
When in its egg, the long-
toed embryo is darker on
top and whiter below. Prior
to hatching the larvae have
“balancers” — thin skin
protrusions sticking out the
sides and supporting the
head. The balancers eventu-
ally fall off and their exter-
nal gills appear. Long-toed
salamanders are predators
in the larval form, and as
they become adults, the head
grows longer (to catch larger
prey, it would seem). Then
their limbs appear — four
digits on the front limbs and
five on the rear — and when
lungs are developed, the gills
are resorbed into the animal’s
tissue bank.
As long-toed larvae
metamorphose, the devel-
oping digits distinguish this
species from others and is
also the etymological ori-
gin of its specific genus:
macrodactylum.
They are also known as
the mole salamanders for the
way they dig into the soil to
escape predators, find food
(worms and larval insects),
and stay cool and damp.
As a Citizen Scientist
your observations could be
vital to the herptile scientific
photo by toM davIs
Long-toed adult salamander.
community (the study of
amphibians and reptiles).
Reproductive habitat, such as
ponds and small slow streams
with larva could be brought to
the attention of local wildlife
officials. If you bump into an
adult long-toed while you’re
gardening or conducting
other outdoor activities, that
too is important information.
Send information to Jim
Anderson, jimnaturalist@
gmail.com.
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