Salamanders are amazing creatures. They are very secretive and often quite small. I performed my undergraduate research in biology on salamanders, so the Order Urodela holds a special place in my heart and mind!
While I was in Louisiana from 2014-2016 I saw amphiuma, newts, marbled salamanders, and sirens. All without trying very hard!
This is a pretty bad picture of a Three-Toed Amphiuma, Amphiuma tridactylum. This picture was taken at the Joyce WMA at night, which explains the poor picture quality. They spook very easily, so it was hard to get close enough to get a good picture. They spend their days burrowed in the mud in the swamps, so we had to go at night to find this one peeking its head out, looking for prey!
Also at Joyce WMA I netted tons of larval Eastern Newts, Notophthalmus viridscens. Here are some out of the water. Don't worry, I submerged them quickly after this photo! Note the globs behind their heads, obscuring their forelimbs. These are their gills, which they use to breathe, similar to how fish respire.
This next picture is of the newts in clear water. Now you can see their fluffy gills floating, capturing all that delicious oxygen-rich water!
These next two picture are of the newts after they've metamorphosed. Note how they've lost their gills. Metamorphosis is a huge restructuring at the cellular level!
Next up is the Marbled Salamander, Ambystoma opacum. This is one of the cutest 'manders I've ever seen!
Ambystoma opacum, Marbled Salamander. One of my fellow graduate students found this lovely female under a huge rock!
Last up: sirens! No, not the sirens of the Homerian type, but of the salamander type. This is a video of a Lesser Siren, Siren intermedia. It was swimming so fast I couldn't get a good picture.
Sirens never lose their gills, unlike most other salamanders. They are fully aquatic species their whole lives and are often mistaken for eels. In fact, they're called "ditch eels" in Louisiana.
You can check out the other parts of my Louisiana Herps series:
PART I
PART II
PART III
Really cool article. Love how you showed them in their different cycles of life. Pretty neat stuff. I will have to ask my brother his experience with these creatures. He lives in LA and loves the little critters. Thank You!
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You're welcome! I'm glad you enjoyed my pictures. Salamanders are so unique, I love to talk about them :) I wonder what species your brother has seen?
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I will link him to the post and ask him. Or if you want to find him on twitter (where he basically lives) and interact with him there he is good to respond to things most of the time. @spottedgeckgo or @writefarmlive on IG.. his site is also writefarmlive.com (indy author and helper of all things writers)
Ciao
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Great educational post!
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Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
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Downvoted to counteract the upvotes from Curie/SG bots and other whales.
More info here: https://steemit.com/test/@abit/whales-no-up-voting-test
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I was wondering why my post had jumped so high in value overnight. Although I'm not sure how well this experiment was planned, I'm very interested to see the results.
I don't have much skin in the game. After all, my estimated account value is only $53. So, I really have nothing to lose if this experiment/steemit/steem power fails.
If, however, this experiment is successful, and the minnows get more power, as they should, then thank you for initiating this.
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Interesting and beautiful!
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Thanks! Glad you enjoyed my pictures.
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So freaking cute!
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Haha aren't they? I think people think of slimy animals when you say "salamander" but they really are some of the most adorable non-mammalian animals out there!
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Salamanders and newts seem so fragile. It's amazing to me that they are as successful as they are. Did you ever run across any of the salamanders that got stuck with their gills, due to iodine problems? There was a county lake near where I grew up full of "water dogs", the mature tiger salamanders that never metamorphose (Ambystoma tigrinum).
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Not in Louisiana. In North Dakota, Tiger Salamanders also sometimes stay paedomorphs. My undergraduate advisor took a really cool underwater video during the winter. After all this madness ends, I'll have to make a post about it, but for now, here's the link:
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Holy smokes - look at all of them! They can be so thick in a lake! That county lake in Kansas was thick with them, too. The lake was surrounded by a beef packing plant, a municipal dump, and a wastewater treatment plant. That water chemistry was so messed up! Those neotenic salamanders were the only thing that could live there. The locals thought the "water dogs" were the cause of the problem, killing all the bass that they wanted to be in that lake. Doh. I wonder what the story is for the lake in the video! I'll look forward to your post, for sure!
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