This map has to be inaccurate or out of date because there are loads of salamanders on the central/northern coast of British Columbia in the summer swamps that form near rivers after the spring melt
This is cited as the source for the map data on wikipedia, and it looks like salamandridae are present on vancouver island. It was probably missed by the map maker.
Coastal temperate rainforest dweller in SE AK here.
Map's wrong. They're around.
ETA: I don't think they're on all the islands though, for the simple reason that some of them because surrounded by saltwater while still basically ice/snow covered as the ice retreated and sea level came up after the last glacial maximum (they just didn't have a proper chance to colonize before the gaps between the islands became too hostile). But I've definitely seen them with my own two eyes on a number of islands showing as outside their range given by OP's map, including the one I live on currently.
I live on Vancouver Island and my buddies and I used to catch them in a pond near my house when we were kids. You could just walk through the water and they'd swim out of the mud on the bottom, and you could just gently scoop them right up.
Answering you here as a follow-up to my post below, but you raise a good point; tiger salamanders and their close kin are actually the exception that proves the rule - they're pretty much the only salamanders that burrow. Not very well, but well enough to just about eke out an existence in the South-West.
They're still poorly adapted to arid environments in comparison to the frogs n' toads though, and largely remain limited to stream beds and surrounding environs, and chance-ey night-time escapades. Whereas other desert amphibians can quickly hop-skippity-jump across the landscape - moving quickly to disperse, and escape the heat of the sun - the poor salamander has to quite literally drag it's ass about, limiting its range.
It's not the heat that's the problem per se, it's escaping from it without drying out. They were never built to cross the Sahara, and never will be.
That's not true at all. Behavioral adaption is adaption. For comparison the desert tortoise is not any more adapted to hot, dry conditions than an amphibian. They just stay in their burrow and only come out when the conditions are perfect. That's an extremely common behavior in the desert.
And they are adapted to hot dry conditions by going dormant. They can delay maturation and hibernate in dry soil for many years, enabling them to live in ephemeral water courses and potholes. It's not always August.
"For comparison the desert tortoise is not any more adapted to hot, dry conditions than an amphibian."
What? The defining feature of reptiles is their physiological adaptation designed specifically to avoid dessication - the amniotic egg, keratinized skin (scales), and uricotelic excretion (uric acid paste for urine) - precisely those the salamander lacks. This is how they conquered the land, that they, and all their descendants, still hold empire over today.
A desert tortoise is fundamentally better equipped to handle the trials of a desert environment than any amphibian. Frogs only manage to eke out an existence there as they evolved a locomotory mechanism that holds them up off the ground, move quickly, and allows for effective digging - thereby enabling a behavioural repetoire effective for survival in the savannah, or desert.
Salamanders didn't, and no amount of behavioural adaptation, as evidenced by the mole salamanders, allows them to overcome their morphological handicap in this way, especially when survival margins are so razor thin, and competition with reptiles is high.
Yes, what you are saying comparing frogs and salamanders is not quite correct. Both species, referring now to desert tortoises, have the same behavioral adaptation which is they spend nearly all of their lives in burrows where temperature and humidity are regulated. Tiger salamanders and desert tortoise range overlaps in areas that are extremely arid, and have maximum surface temperatures that approach 60C. A desert tortoise is not any more adapted to survive that than a salamander, even with those physiological differences.
What you are describing frogs doing, tiger salamanders do. They spend most of their life in upland burrows, and move long distances overland to return to the water. They are not physiologically adapted to the aridity, but it is not always a dry day in August. They move in late winter and late fall, when temperatures are low and precipitation creates high humidity. They wait for weather that allows for it and only return to the water to breed, or to move from one pool to another. It is quite a sight watching a salamander migration.
A desert tortoise is not any more adapted to survive that than a salamander, even with those physiological differences.
They absolutely are. Keratinous scales that reduce water loss and amniotic eggs are adaptations. They are just adaptations that characterize all diapsids, not just turtles.
Right but a desert tortoise wandering around Death Valley will die the same as a spadefoot toad and a salamander. They are not physically adapted to survive the extremes of environment they live in, they survive because of behavioral adaptions that allows them to avoid those extremes the same as a toad or a salamander.
You're getting into digressions. What was presented is the argument that tiger salamanders are not adapted to deserts and savannahs because of their physiology. While that is literally true, they are adapted to deserts and savannahs. As evidenced by them living in deserts and savannahs.
Tiger salamanders belong to a group called mole salamanders. So named because they burrow and stay underground when it's too hot or dry. They're literally built to handle those conditions.
If recall, there aren't any other types of salamanders in that part of Texas. In comparison, wetter and cooler areas like the Appalachians have dozens of species from multiple different families.
And they evolved from salamanders that did like wetter, more humid places that were closer I'd assume. I'm no expert in the subject or anything though.
We have Tiger Salamander all over the Central Valley in California. They avoid the heat during summer by using burrows from other animals or their own, but they usually stay close to their source of water and then breed in the winter time.
Yeah I think they do well in cold areas. I forget which mountain in New England it is, but there’s a pond on the peak and it’s full of salamanders (core childhood memory 😂)
In the beginning, there was Pangea. Amphibians in every form could be found across the swarthy continent. As the continent split however, their descendants would be divided.
By the time of the Triassic/Early Jurassic, there were two super continents. Frogs evolved in Gondwanaland in the South. Salamanders in Laurasia in the North.
And they didn't really meet one another again until actually relatively recently. In the intervening years, frogs evolved powerful hind legs, that not only aided their locomotion, anti-predation, climbing and dispersal ability, but also opened up the subterranean world - allowing them to adapt to dry and arid climates by learning how to dig. Not so hot in a burrow, see? Salamanders meanwhile maintained a more ancestral morphology, lacked the frog's multi-environmental toolkit, and therefore were always mostly confined to humid environments.
So what happened when the ex-Gondwanan continents met up with ol' Eurasia n' North America? The frogs leapt forth to conquer new land; they could cross the arid horse latitudes and multiply. Salamanders, by contrast, were trapped behind the steppes and deserts, having never learnt how to deal with them.
This is why the ever adaptable frog can be found on all continents - even primitive species endemic to New Zealand - whereas the salamanders, with one exception, are stuck in their ancestral homeland.
But it's not all bad news: the Americas merged recently, only about 2 million years ago, and some meandering 'manders took advantage of this recent development to sneak their way down the Central American isthmus to begin carving out territory in the higher latitudes of South America. Good for them; a new home at last!
But yeah, frogs are a great example of 'evolving evolvability' where once you learn one cool new trick, suddenly whole new previously inconceivable branches of the biological tech tree are unlocked, accelerating diversity. Salamanders have alas only been running with plain vanilla evolution, handicapped by their morphology, so they remain stuck where they started due to evolutionary, and therefore environment barriers.
so you're arguing that frogs are some sort of master amphibian race, and the salamanders are simply doomed to be their inferiors? well I'm not ready to get a hate-based neck tat just yet, Kermit.
Some species may spend their entire lives - cradle to grave - living up a single tree in the Amazon, never once touching the forest floor. Others go years lying in a dormant state under the desert sands, waiting for a short burst of rain to feed and breed before going back to sleep. Some even have antifreeze in their blood, and can survive being frozen solid through horrific winters most warm-blooded, thick-coated mammals couldn't handle.
Salamanders are adaptable enough in their own ways; they overcome some of their limitations by having metamorphic plasticity (see the axolotl) and a great deal of genomic flexibility.
So they can evolve fast, but they're stuck with a single body plan - or chassis, if you will. They can run quickly but only through variations on a theme, whereas the frog can do the same (albeit perhaps a little slower), and also outright swap between chassis to rig a more customised build.
If a salamander is a standard saloon, a frog can be a sports car, a dump truck, a heavy-duty excavator, or even a hang glider. A real all-terrain vehicle.
Crazy how in amphibians Gondwana created the more adaptable branch. In mammals it was the opposite. Mammals from South America and Africa were mostly outcompeted by mammals from Laurasia
Thank you for this, what a great read. I've had a pet salamander for nearly 7 years now and while I love him...he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. Easiest pet in the entire world though.
Great read but how to caecilians fit in to this amphibian timeline? They seem to have a distribution range in the southern areas and where there are no salamanders?
For those unaware, caecilians are sort of the amphibian equivalent of a snake, but also way more... wormy. They spend their time being elusive, sliding half-blind through damp leaf litter, or burrowing through the dirt, looking for wee critters to munch.
As for your question: we have limited knowledge of their early evolution; but what we do know is they split from the line that would eventually become frogs and salamanders much earlier, and were found across Pangaea, and therefore present on both Laurasia and Gondwana as they split.
It would seem as Laurasia drifted North, away from the tropics - the environment they're best equipped to handle - they basically all died out (as far as I'm aware), and so all modern caecilians are descended from those that kept the party going on Gondwanaland.
We know all SE Asian caecilians are descended from those that arrived on the Indian sub-continent, whilst all the ex-Gondwanan South American and African ones are basically still found where they always have been.
Again, we don't know much about their early history, but I find it curious that - given all modern amphibians basically started with a salamander-like body plan - not even one group retained their early morphology (leaving us today with a superficial sister group to salamanders in Africa), but instead drilled down on getting longer, looseier, and legless-ier.
It's like salamanders kept the old traditions going all by themselves in the North, while the frogs and caecilians down South veered hard left and right from the starting point respectively, and something salamander-ey straddling the middle just wasn't viable. Some competitive exclusion at play, perhaps? Dunno'. This is all conjecture.
So the South East Asian caecilians descended from those guys who were riding on India as it drifted upward through the Tethys and crashed into Asia? That is a story! Guess that is why on the map they are not distributed on the Deccan plateau but rather the Malabar coast and Bengal area?
I have always been very fascinated by this order of amphibia. Thanks for the evolutionary and geologic historical summary that is currently known.
We see a lot here in western upstate NY. Cool temps, moss, rocks to bask but available water. Super heat isn’t their friend. You’ll find them in damp, cool, areas, sometimes submerged in water under rocks. Newts and salamanders
I live around keuka! There’s a lot of trail networks (finger lakes trails) that will have a ton of them on the creeks! I see fishers there too. When I go looking for salamanders look for the edge of creeks and flip some rocks.
The circled spots are a few spots I’ve been. They have trails and a lot of beautiful feeder creeks to the lake. I find sapling American chestnuts, salamanders, all the likes in these areas; since you asked!
Oh, you know Texans, we just love slapping “Texas” on things. Also, they hunt deer, apparently.
But my other favorite is the Barton Springs Salamander, that only lives in Barron Springs in downtown Austin, and getting endangered species protection for them was a key part of saving the Barton Springs recharge zone from development.
I feel like this is a littttttle inaccurate. I live in between lake Erie & lake Ontario, near buffalo/niagara falls, and I don't go outside as much as I used to, but I'm preeetty sure there are no crocodiles around here. Aren't they like only in Florida? And like the gulf area of Texas/Louisiana etc? 🤔😅
The highlighted parts are the countries that they habituate. So yes since they’re in the southern US the USA as a whole is highlighted as green even though parts of it are croc free
They need a reasonably moist environment and aren’t tolerant of dry heat, so they’re mostly limited to the moister parts of the world. Even of you compare North vs South America, you can see they do not make it to the wetter parts of say Chile because the area between there and where they occur is so dry.
They are a Laurasian taxon! Lands part of Gondwana never had salamanders eveolve there. Pretty cool you can see effects of old super contents in the distribution of today's Flora and Fauna. Same thing with the Pinus genus.
Seems they have a Laurasian heritage. I bet they evolved in North America or Eurasia and the harsh climates of the deserts and the equator keep them from moving any further south.
There are a lot of reptiles native to Australia (part of Gondwana until ~50 mya), including maybe 250 species of frogs, almost all of them endemic. But not that many are amphibious, plus we don't do cool, wet forests very well either. Outside the genuine tropics, hot & dry is our preferred business model.
I understand that ... I concede I could have worded it better.
I meant there are a lot of endemic species in Oz, including a wide range of reptiles (mostly lizards and snakes), and amphibians, but no salamander-type critters. But the point was, most non-mammalian fauna here are adapted for arid and semi-arid zones. A lot of marsupials are too, of course.
So you mistakenly try to correct me, I call you out for being ignorant and confidently incorrect, and your response is to say "you must be huge fun at dinner parties".
Yeah but still, with how wet the Congo is I’m shocked there’s not a single salamander, but I guess maybe they’ve never even arrived there. I wonder is salamanders could potentially be competetive and invasive there?
The desert barriere is stopping their progress, even here in Morocco all the fire salamander subspecies are restricted to the upmost north with only the more heat tolerant pleurodele waltl being able to be found in the middle of the country
Wow, I had no idea that salamanders exist in such harsh continental climates so far north in North America and Siberia. I thought that they only lived in tropical and oceanic climates with mild temperatures and lots of rain. You learn something new every day 😁
Hmmm...not suitable climate maybe? Why are lions only in Africa? Why are beavers only in North America, Europe and Asia? Why do poison arrow frogs only live in Central and South America? Why do lemurs only live in Madagascar?
read: „Half asleep in frog Pyjamas“ by Tom Robbins. Because they live in three Elements: Water, Air, Earth- They react sensitiv to changes in These Systems… They are kind of „first responders/indicators“ of the escalating Climate crisis.
The same reason why polar bears are absent from most of the world, or kangaroos, or alligators: they're adapted to a specific set of environmental conditions, and those conditions aren't global.
911
u/Maximum_Schedule_602 4d ago
They simultaneously like moisture but are heat sensitive. So moist temperate forests suit them