Mole salamander

Mole salamanders
Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Amphibia
Order:	Caudata
Suborder:	Salamandroidea
Family:	Ambystomatidae
Genus:	Ambystoma Tschudi, 1838

The mole salamanders (genus Ambystoma) are a group of salamanders endemic to North America, the only genus in the family Ambystomatidae. The group has become famous due to the presence of the Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), widely used in research, and the Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum, Ambystoma mavortium) which is the official amphibian of many states, and often sold as a pet.

General description

Ambystoma kansensis (Adams 1929) fossil

Terrestrial mole salamanders are identified by having wide, protruding eyes, prominent costal grooves, thick arms, and rounded tails. Most have vivid patterning on dark backgrounds, with marks ranging from deep blue spots to large yellow bars depending on the species. Terrestrial adults spend most of their life underground in burrows either of their own making or abandoned by other animals. Some Northern species may hibernate in these burrows throughout the winter. They live alone and feed on any available invertebrate. Adults spend little time in the water, only returning to the ponds of their birth to breed.

All mole salamanders are oviparous and lay large eggs in clumps in the water. Their fully aquatic larvae are branchiate, with 3 pairs of external gills behind their head and above their gill slits. Larvae have large caudal fins which extend from the back of their head to their tail and to their cloaca. Larvae grow limbs soon after hatching, with four toes on the forearms, and five toes on the hindlegs. Their eyes are wide-set and lack true eyelids.

The larvae of some species (especially those in the South, and Tiger salamanders) can reach their adult size before undergoing metamorphosis. During metamorphosis, the gills of the larvae disappear, as does the fin. The tail, skin, and limbs become thicker, and the eyes develop lids. Their lungs become fully developed, allowing for a fully terrestrial existence.

Tiger salamander complex

Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum)

The presence of neotenic populations near those with large larvae has made it difficult to identify mole salamander species. The Tiger Salamander complex used to be considered a single species ranging from Canada to Mexico, falling under the name A. tigrinum. Despite differences in coloration and larvae, Tiger Salamanders were found throughout their unbroken range, which made it difficult to delineate subspecies, let-alone elevate any populations to species status. In morphological terms, Tiger Salamanders are all very similar, with large heads, small eyes, and thick bodies. This is probably because Tiger Salamanders have the primitive morphology of mole salamanders. They are also the largest of the mole salamanders, and have very large larvae. All populations have similar lifestyles and life-cycles are identical. However, when one looks at Tiger Salamander populations that were distant from each other, it becomes apparent that there are different species within this complex. The problem is that the ranges of these potential species overlap, and hybridization occurs, blurring the lines between species.

Several subspecies of A. tigrinum were named to deal with this problem. Recently, the Barred Tiger Salamander (A. mavortium) was elevated to species status—covering the Tiger salamander populations in the western and central United States. Several distinct subspecies still exist in A. mavortium, which may be elevated to species status at some point in the future. The California Tiger Salamander (A. californiense) has also been elevated out of A. tigrinum, and is actually very distantly related to all other mole salamander species. The Plateau Tiger Salamander (A. velasci) was elevated out of A. tigrinum through genetic analysis in 1997. All accounts referring to the Axolotl (A. mexicanum) as a close relative of A. tigrinum are now considered wrong, as they are now separated by both geography and many species between. Instead, it is A. velasci which shares the Axolotl's habitat, and is probably closely related to it. The Plateau Tiger Salamander was probably the parent of most of the neotenic species, which raises the possibility that A. velasci is paraphyletic, and may be broken up into more species in the future.

laterale-jeffersonianum complex and all-female populations

Unisexual (all-female) populations of ambystomatid salamanders are widely distributed across the Great Lakes region and northeastern North America. Female unisexuals require sperm from a co-occurring species to initiate reproduction; however, they can then either discard the sperm and reproduce asexually (i.e., gynogenesis), or incorporate the genome from the sperm into the resulting offspring (Bogart et al. 2007; Ramsden 2008). Sperm incorporation can take the form of genome addition (resulting in ploidy elevation in the offspring), or genome replacement, wherein one of the maternal genomes is discarded. This unique mode of reproduction has been termed kleptogenesis by Bogart and his colleagues (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17546077).

The nuclear DNA of unisexuals generally comprises genomes from up to five species: the Blue-spotted Salamander (Ambystoma laterale), Jefferson Salamander (A. jeffersonianum), Smallmouth Salamander (A. texanum), Streamside Salamander (A. barbouri), and Tiger Salamander (A. tigrinum), denoted respectively as L, J, T, B, and Ti This flexibility results in a large number of possible nuclear biotypes (genome combinations) in the unisexuals. For example, an LJJ individual would be a triploid with one laterale genome and two jeffersonianum genomes, while an LTJTi individual would be a tetraploid with genomes from four species. Because they have hybrid genomes, unisexual salamanders are a cryptic species with morphology similar to coexisting species. For example LLJs look like Blue-spotted Salamanders and LJJs look like Jefferson Salamanders. Silvery Salamanders LJJ (A. platineum), Tremblay's Salamanders LLJ (A. tremblayi), and Kelly's Island Salamanders LTT and LTTi (A. nothagenes) were initially described as species. Species names were later dropped for all uniseuxal salamanders because of the complexity of their genomes. Despite the complexity of the nuclear genome, all unisexuals form a monophyletic group based on their mitochondrial DNA. The maternal ancestor of the unisexual ambystomatids was most closely related to the Streamside Salamander, with the original hybridization likely occurring 2.4-3.9 million years ago (Bogart et al. 2007) making it the oldest known lineage of all-female vertebrates.

Taxonomy

Phylogenetic tree showing relations among Ambystoma species and outgroups. For example, the sister taxon to Ambystoma macrodactylum is Ambystoma laterale, meaning they share a single common ancestor and are each others closest living relatives.

The genera Dicamptodon and Rhyacotriton were formerly included in this family, but are now usually placed into their own families Dicamptodontidae and Rhyacotritonidae. In 2006, a large study of amphibian systematics (Frost et al., Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 297 (2006) placed Dicamptodon back within Ambystomatidae, based on cladistic analysis. This has been accepted by the Center for North American Herpetology.

Rhyacosiredon used to be considered a separate genus within the family Ambystomatidae. However, cladistic analysis of the mole salamanders found that the existence of Rhyacosiredon makes Ambystoma paraphyletic, since the species are more closely related to some Ambystoma species than those species are to others in Ambystoma. The stream-type morphology of these salamanders (which includes larvae and neotenes with short gills and thicker gular folds) may have led to their misclassification as a different genus.

The genus name Ambystoma is traditionally translated as "cup-mouth," but is actually nonsense. Johann Jakob von Tschudi, who described the genus, intended to call it Amblystoma, "blunt-mouth." However, he misspelled the genus as Ambystoma at many points throughout his description. Under biological naming rules, the misspelling Ambystoma takes precedence and cannot be changed. This is especially true because it was widely used by other authors. Occasionally, old specimens and documents will bear the intended genus name.^{[citation needed]}

Species

This genus contains 32 species, listed below, the newest being A. bishopi. Terrestrial species are labeled with a "T," neotenic species are labeled with an "N," while species with established populations of both are labeled with a "V." Subspecies and hybrids are listed beneath their parent species.

• Mountain Stream Salamander (Ambystoma altimirani) V
• Blunt-Headed Salamander (Ambystoma amblycephalum) V
• Anderson's Salamander (Ambystoma andersoni) N
• Ringed Salamander (Ambystoma annulatum) T
• Streamside Salamander (Ambystoma barbouri) T
• Reticulated Flatwoods Salamander (Ambystoma bishopi) T
• Delicate-Skinned Salamander (Ambystoma bombypellum) T
• California Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma californiense) T
• Frosted Flatwoods Salamander (Ambystoma cingulatum) T
• Lake Patzcuaro Salamander (Ambystoma dumerilii) N
• Yellow-Peppered Salamander (Ambystoma flavipiperatum) T
• Northwestern Salamander (Ambystoma gracile) T
• Granular Salamander (Ambystoma granulosum) T
• Jefferson Salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonianum) T
• Blue-spotted Salamander (Ambystoma laterale) T
• Silvery Salamander (Ambystoma platineum)
• Tremblay's Salamander (Ambystoma tremblayi)
• Lake Lerma Salamander (Ambystoma lermaense) V
• Leora's Salamander (Ambystoma leorae) T
• Mabee's Salamander (Ambystoma mabeei) T
• Long-toed Salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum) T
• Santa Cruz Long-toed Salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum croceum) T
• Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) T
• Barred Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma mavortium) V
• Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) N
• Marbled Salamander (Ambystoma opacum) T
• Puerto Hondo Stream Salamander (Ambystoma ordinarium) V
• Michoacan Stream Salamander (Ambystoma rivulare) T
• Tarahumara Salamander (Ambystoma rosaceum) V
• Durango Salamander (Ambystoma silvense) V
• Mole Salamander (Ambystoma talpoideum) V
• Taylor's Salamander (Ambystoma taylori) N
• Small-mouthed Salamander (Ambystoma texanum) T
• Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) V
• Plateau Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma velasci) V

See also

• Oophila amblystomatis

References

• http://amphibiaweb.org/lists/Ambystomatidae.shtml
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17546077

Bogart, J., K. Bi, J. Fu, D.W.A Noble, and J. Niedzwiecki. 2007. Unisexual salamanders (genus Ambystoma) present a new reproductive mode for eukaryotes. Genome: 2007, 50:(2) 119-136, 10.1139/G06-152. online: http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/full/10.1139/G06-152#

Cadhla Ramsden (2008) Population Genetics of Ambystoma jeffersonianum and Sympatric Unisexuals Reveal Signatures of Both Gynogenetic and Sexual Reproduction. Copeia: September 2008, Vol. 2008, No. 3, pp. 586-594

External links

Data related to Ambystomatidae at Wikispecies Media related to Ambystomatidae at Wikimedia Commons

• Tree of Life: Ambystomatidae
• Herpseeker.dk
• IUCN redlist of threatened Ambystomatidae