Salamander Strategies

     Salamanders are amphibians, as are frogs and toads.  Amphibian is a Greek word that means "two lives" which frogs, toads and many kinds of salamanders have; one in water and the other on land.
     Salamanders have four strategies for survival.  Some species, including hellbenders, mud puppies, blind cave salamanders and sirens, live in water all their lives.  Other salamander species are aquatic when young and terrestrial as adults, which defines mole salamanders.  Newts start life in water, live on land for a year or more, then return to water as adults, where they spend the rest of their lives.  And there are salamander species that live all their lives on damp ground under logs, rocks and fallen leaves on forest floors.
     All salamanders are predators, consuming a variety of invertebrates, whether in water or on land.  And most species of them are camouflaged for safety in their respective habitats.
     Mole salamanders have the most typical amphibian lifestyle.  They start life as larvae in puddles of water, change to adults with lungs for life on land, and return to water only to spawn.  They are called mole salamanders because of their adult life of tunneling through fallen leaves and moist soil on woodland floors. 
     Adult spotted salamanders are the most common and widespread of their family in northeastern North America.  They are about six inches long, black and have two rows of orange or yellow spots down their top sides from head to tail.
     During the first warm rains in February or early in March in southeastern Pennsylvania, male and female spotted salamanders emerge from dormancy in the soil under carpets of fallen leaves and march to pools on forest floors to spawn eggs in white, gelatin-like,m protective clusters.  When done spawning, they quickly retreat back under blankets of dropped leaves before cold weather returns.  Their young are left to hatch, feed themselves and develop lungs for life on land.       
     Eastern spotted newts start life in ponds.  After a few months they become orange salamanders, with black-circled red dots, and live on forest floors for one or two years.  Then they are visible during rains and called red efts.
     Perhaps, long ago, somewhere, red efts couldn't compete with other land salamanders for food and shelter.  And maybe there was a niche open in shallow, fresh water at that time.  The efts changed their bodies and lifestyle to again live in water as reproducing adults.  Adult eastern newts are olive above with red spots and yellow below with black dots.  The olive allows them to blend into their watery habitat. 
     Red-backed and slimy salamanders are abundant species in the lungless family of salamanders that live totally on moist soil under rocks, logs and carpets of fallen leaves on woodland floors.  Females of these two species lay a dozen or more eggs in a cluster under damp, protective logs and leaves on the ground and guard their progeny until they hatch.  The young hatch on land as miniature replicas of their parents.  These salamanders, obviously, do not have aquatic egg or larval stages in their life histories.  
     Because they don't need to spawn in water, and fields, roads and other human constructions create woodland islands, new species of salamanders may be forming as I write about them.  Isolated communities of salamanders will have no new genes coming into or leaving them.  Therefore, any favorable quirk in a genetic code will stay within its community and a new species will develop.
     And it could be that these totally land salamanders will sometime in the future spawn eggs with shells that retain moisture, pushing those salamanders into being more lizard-like in that respect.  But lungless salamanders will also have to genetically develop lungs because they now "breathe" through their moist skins and throat linings that lose a lot of moisture, drying the salamanders to death in dry habitats.  And lungless salamanders' skins must always be moist so they can breathe at all.
     These are strategies some salamander species have for survival.  Those techniques for life make those amphibians quite interesting.