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Hemidactylium scutatum

Four-toed salamander
Hemidactylium scutatum.jpg
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Order: Urodela
Family: Plethodontidae
Genus: Hemidactylium
Tschudi, 1838
Species: H. scutatum
Binomial name
Hemidactylium scutatum
Temminck & Schlegel in Von Siebold (1838)

The four-toed salamander (Hemidactylium scutatum) is a lungless salamander native to eastern North America. It is a species of the monotypic genus Hemidactylium. (In Francophone Canada, it is called the salamandre à quatre orteils.)

The four-toed salamander can be recognized by its white underbelly sprinkled with black dots. Its back varies from orange-brownish to red-brownish; its flanks are grayish. The body and the limbs are elongated. The snout is short, and the eyes are prominent. The tail color is usually brighter than the back, and you can observe a constriction at the body/tail junction. The posterior limbs have four toes (hence its name), a good identification criterion but hard to use in the field. This species rarely exceeds 10 cm in length. The sexes are alike except for the shape of the head. Males have elongated and almost square snouts, whereas the females' snouts are short and round. The juveniles show a tail shorter than the body.

The four-toed salamander can be easily mistaken for the redback salamander (Plethodon cinereus) in the wild. The redback’s underbelly is more of a "salt & pepper" color. There is no constriction at the tail and posterior limbs show five digits.

Mating occurs in terrestrial areas throughout the fall months. In early spring the females nest on land, along the banks of small ponds. After the 4–6 week embryonic period, the larvae hatch and make their way to the adjacent pond. Four-toed Salamanders undergo a relatively short aquatic larval period, when compared to other species of the same family, ranging between 3 and 6 weeks.

The four-toed salamander has three main forms of self-defense against predators. The first is that it purposely sheds off its tail to distract the enemy. When the tail comes of, it is still wiggling around. The enemy gets distracted giving the salamander time to get away. The second form of defense is playing dead. When threatened, this salamander will have a short burst of violent trashes and then stop dead in its tracks. It will stay frozen like this until it feels the threat is gone (Sass and Anderson, 2011). The third and final form of defense is it will curl up and put its tail on its back offering it in exchange for its life.

There are three methods of nesting that have been documented in the females of H. scutatum, which can fall into one of two categories, solitary or communal/joint nesting. Solitary nesters lay and brood only their eggs. Communal nesting is normally one female brooding the eggs of two or more, up to 14, females of the same species. In this method the females either lay their eggs and leave the nest, or lay their eggs and stay to brood their eggs as well as those of the deserting females. About 1/3 of the nests of a population are joint nests, while between 50% and 70% of females lay their eggs in joint nests each year.


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Wikipedia

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