Cutie. This is a fairly small salamander, thinner than the width of a pencil. It looks pretty much like the Santa Lucia Mountains slender salamander (B. luciae) that I found April 29, 2012 as I was digging around at home. Well, okay, this one is not covered in dirt and has a longer tail. Field markings are almost no help for several look-alikes, because they
appear to have just as much variation within as between spp. Thanks to the expert ID I received from Gary Nafis @ California Herps and John Sullivan @ Wild Herps for my B. luciae, I understand the currently acceptable way to distinguish slender salamanders is to pinpoint location found. Here's a map of Batrachoseps spp. distribution. It doesn't seem very intuitive, but whatever, I'll go with it. I kinda wish I had retaken molecular genetics back when I transferred to a larger (read: better funded) university, because I might have appreciated what the PCR craze is all about. As it is, the statistical models, like Tajima’s D and Fu’s Fs, sound like rap names to me. Eh, I guess I'm getting old and staid.
2 comments:
Never saw a salamander that looked like that. I like the red stripe!
J, I think you'd probably have loads of these hidden in the dirt just outside your kitchen window.
Post a Comment