wordless Wednesday

CA newt ~ 03/10/14 ~ Midpen Preserve

California newt

Taricha torosa
Salamandridae

OK, what are they feeding the amphibians at this preserve?  Good golly, they're fat and huge, just like the Pacific chorus frog we found.   Seriously, no one is actively feeding these wild-found animals, but there must be plenty of food stuff available and plenty of comfortable habitat.  In one month's time, the CA newts have gone from skin and bones, like at nearby Stevens Creek on February 10, 2014, to fat, fat, fat.  Ya, the two locations have very different habitats, but still!  I'm unsure if the one in my hand is male or female.  Are those male nuptial pads on the toes?  Do you know?

a Rubenesque California newt

rough-skinned newt ~ 03/03/14 ~ Purisima Creek

rough-skinned newt
Taricha granulosa

Salamandridae

Often, I have to see something in person to really "get it".  Ken @ Nature of a Man showed me these very clearly defined rough-skinned newts.  Their dark color is distinctive, especially with a sharp, solid color divide, under the eye area, extending around the upper lip.  I found the color in my newt pictures can be wholly misleading from what I remember, depending on lighting conditions, and/or if a camera flash is used, and/or what the predominant surrounding color is, like these redwood needles here.  They look much darker in real life than my pictures indicate.

Do these eyes NOT extend past the margin of the head?

OK.  Love, love the toes.  Four in front, five in back and all dipped in yellow around the purlicue.  I find myself silently squealing like an 80's Valley Girl, "Like, oh my god!  Awesome!"

Yeah, but... I still don't get the eye margin and lower eyelid diagnostics when compared to CA newts (T. torosa).  We've noted quite a bit of gradation of characteristics among individual newts, especially at Stevens Creek where we saw so many.  It seems like T. granulosa and T. torosa intergrade, but I'm not sure that's known for a fact.  I believe Ken is gathering observational evidence.

I dunno, everyone sees things a little differently.  A friend once claimed that different cultures see colors very differently, and I suspect he was right.  I didn't necessarily agree with his claim of cultural basis, although that could very well be true.  I figure different groups of people would have natural genetic differences in how their eyes physically process information.  It's like how I, an Asian, can squat very low, and my husband, a Scandanavian, can barely cross his legs.  Same difference.

regenerating newt tail

It's crazy cool how newts can regrow body parts.  Remember for a while there, I had considered going back to school to study salamanders?  After talking it over with numerous people, I have decided it's not the best idea for me.  First, I didn't have any pressing questions about them.  What would I research?  I already know I don't like working on someone else's passion project, particularly when they die on me and leave me with a mess of handwritten scraps.  I want to follow my own questions and paths.  Plus, if I were honest, I truly only wanted to raise newts and salamanders 'cause they're cute, but under the guise of "in the name of science" (hey, it happens).  To do this, I'd have to handle them a lot.  Guess what?  They're toxic, very much so, producing tetrodotoxin (TTX), "the most poisonous nonprotein substance known to scientists."  Yeah, sure, you can be careful washing hands and such, but can you be sure to be careful all the time?  Ever since my first collegiate research project involving the unusual mating ritual of an x-large, yet incredibly beautiful, tropical mosquito (Limatus durhamii), I knew fairly quickly from first-hand experience (i.e., many itchy, sleepless nights with arms swollen from a colony's worth of female mosquito bites) that I did not want to study anything that sucks blood, bites, stings, poisons, or kills.  Seriously.  Then, there's another conundrum surrounding all herps, the dratted pet trade.  I don't know if it is "dratted" and bad, but it's what I've heard.  So that leads to a lot of secrecy, loads, so secret the CIA... uh, nevermind.

CA newt ~ 02/16/14 ~ Los Padres Dam

California newt

Taricha torosa
Salamandridae

Well, color me orange!  More newts!  This seems to happen to me all the time; once I see something and learn to recognize it, I tend to notice a lot more of them.  We found a couple dozen, and in much drier areas than I would ever expect to see them.  Click on the picture above to take a closer look at the amazing newt iris.  Very cool.

possible rough-skinned newt intergrade?
possible Taricha granulosa intergrade?

Supposedly, rough-skinned newts have not been found in this area before, but I'm still closely examining my photos with Gary Nafis' Taricha spp. comparison.  I dunno, do the eyes "extend past the margin of the head"?  Would it help if I said the lower eyelids on this individual were ambiguously dark?  Erg.  Erg.  Erg.  I may have to throw in the towel on being able to separate the 2 spp.

How many newts?

Answer: 2.  It could well have been the different lighting and moisture level (sunny vs. the overcast skies under tree cover at Stevens Creek from last week), but it seemed to me the newts here at Los Padres Dam have more of a reddish coloring on top.  In fact, I'd say their red was almost a perfect match with the madrone bark.

in the Carmel River

Good-bye, newts.  See you next time.  Have a lot of love and lay a lot of eggs.

CA newt ~ 02/10/14 ~ Stevens Creek

California newt

Taricha torosa
Salamandridae

 possible rough-skinned newt intergrade? 

 possible Taricha granulosa intergrade?

Squee!  I thought I had died and gone to newt heaven.  With 4 days of decent rain, we had high hopes in finding newts.  And, we did.  A couple hundred of them.  Yes, hundreds.  I stopped keeping track of count after a few hours.  We must have hit the timing jackpot, because I don't believe sightings like this are typical.  Or maybe they are?  This year's winter has been so wacky with the lack of rain, that the newts may not have been very active before now.  Many looked like skin and bones, with tiny little hips sticking out, and yet just as many others were quite plump and very healthy looking. Lots of thanks to Cindy @ Dipper Ranch for getting us bloggers together for this excursion.

If left to my own amateur ID skills, I would have said the above two newts were both CA newts.  Many online pictures show rough-skinned newts as being much darker, practically a charcoal color, with the area under the eye also quite dark.  Ken @ Nature of a Man suggested the ones we found may be intergrades.  Hybrids?  With so many newts around to compare, there was quite a bit of subtle variation in how much the eyes bulged and combinations of coloring (mustard yellow to cheddar orange to chocolate brown).  As I picked up several, I noticed an immediate tactile textural difference.  Those that felt rougher indeed had slightly darker coloring under the eyes; perhaps that's how they got their name.  I honestly don't know if the way they feel in the hand could be considered diagnostic, because I haven't handled that many newts before.  Plus, we found newts in many different stages, from itty-bitty 2 1/2" (head to tail tip) juveniles to hefty males with, eh-hem, bulges.  Check out Gary Nafis' California Herps for the best side-by-side Taricha spp. comparison.

 How many newts?

Answer: 3.  Only after one or two had been pointed out to me did I begin to recognize their movement in the douglas-fir leaf litter.  Pretty much they plod along on their little legs, but they will freeze momentarily when approached.  I can see why some parks will close roads for newt crossings.  They're perfectly colored to blend in with their surroundings and are not easy to spot.  I'm guessing I've passed many newts during my hikes and simply have rarely noticed them before.  Sadly, they're collected for the pet trade as "Oregon newts". Along with the convergent lady beetles, this was yet another reason for our discussion about the implications of sharing nature finds online.  Hey, I'm not giving out trail names or GPS points, so collectors can hike around just like everyone else to maybe find them.  They'd better be in good shape.

A 5th leg!

Given the number of newts we found this day, the chances of finding a mutant were good,  obviously considering we found one.  I don't understand how mutations work in newts.  Does it originate in the egg?  Or does it happen sometime when transforming from aquatic larva to terrestrial adult?  How much does the quality of the environment affect newts?  Or even an accident later in life?  Apparently, they're able to regenerate lost limbs.  These are definitely animals I want to learn more about.  Does anyone have a recommendation for a good, scientific, but not too dry, newt book?

CA newt ~ 07/27/11 ~ Butano

California newt / coast range newt
Taricha torosa torosa
Salamandridae

I knew Butano State Park was known for their newts based on our brief visit in the rain on October 24, 2010. According to the brochure, February is a good month to spot newts. I didn't expect to find any in the middle of summer. We actually saw a few, both on land well away from any water and in Little Butano Creek. Andy pointed them out to me. I'm discovering he has quite the eye for finding newts/salamanders.

Butano has two similar looking species of newts, the CA newt and the rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa). Based on the bumpy skin of the individual I photographed above, I figured I had a rough-skinned newt. Nope. Thankfully, CaliforniaHerps.com has this handy-dandy Taricha ID guide. Both transform to a smoother skin during their aquatic reproductive phase - never heard of this before researching for this blog post. Plus, both have yellow patches in the eyes. What sold me on the T. torosa ID was the light-colored lower eyelid.

I'll admit to picking up this fellow to keep him from sashaying into the water before I could get a couple of pictures. We later read that it has poisonous skin secretions. I need to learn to not pick up wild, unknown things, even if they're irresistibly cute. The toes totally get me laughing. Four in front and five in back. As a side note, it looks like this one still has its nuptial pads. Shoot, forget caterpillars and tadpoles, I think I may want to raise a few newts, ones without poisonous secretions.

ps 02/17/14 - Given my outing with fellow bloggers on February 10, 2014, I'm now wondering if this might be a rough-skinned newt intergrade.  Erg.