Marbled Salamander Characteristics

The female has gray markings and the male has white markings.

Marbled salamander characteristics.

Marbled salamanders grow to about 3 5 4 25 in 9 10 7 cm in size and are stout bodied and chubby in appearance. They can be identified by their black dark brown body including its venter with light white silvery crossbands on the dorsum. Range the marbled salamander can be found from southern new hampshire to northern florida and west to. The marbled salamander is a stocky boldly banded salamander.

The decision to undergo. Like most of the mole salamanders it is secretive spending most of its life under logs or in burrows. It has 11 12 costal grooves vertical grooves. Marbled salamanders ambystoma opacum urodela.

Like other ambystomatids these salamanders spend most of their time underground in burrows and are infrequently seen outside of the breeding season. Characteristics the marbled salamander is three to five inches long. This species is sexually dimorphic males tend to have white crossbands and females tend to have gray silvery crossbands. The belly may be black or brownish black occasionally with some light speckling.

Background marbled salamanders are distributed across the eastern us from new hampshire to northern florida and west to lake michigan in the north and texas in the south 1 the species generally inhabits deciduous forest and prairie and is absent from much of the appalachian mountains 1 2 in massachusetts it is present at relatively low abundances partially due to being at the extreme. Ambystoma opacum the marbled salamander is found throughout most of the eastern united states from massachusetts west to central illinois southeastern missouri and oklahoma and eastern texas south to the gulf of mexico and the carolina coast it is absent from peninsular florida. It has a black body with white or silvery gray markings. Disjunct populations are found in eastern missouri central illinois in northwest ohio.

The marbled salamander is a medium sized 3 4 5 inches adult length thick bodied salamander with white or gray bands across a black to dark brown black body. Mole salamanders are facultatively paedomorphic meaning that they may retain larval characteristics as adults and continue to live in water or complete metamorphosis and live in the terrestrial environment. Adults can grow to about 11 cm 4 in small compared to other members of its genus. Marbled salamanders spend most of their lives in self excavated burrows or those dug by small mammals and are most commonly found in deciduous or mixed pine forests on sandy soil.

Adults are found in forested habitats and seem to prefer sandy pine forests more than the marbled salamander.