Critically Endangered
Ambrosi's Cave Salamander
Speleomantes ambrosii
Ambrosi's Cave Salamander is a salamander in the family Plethodontidae (order Caudata) — Speleomantes ambrosii, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
There is a ridge known as a canthus between the snout and the eye. The colour is variable, being brown to black with marbling, mottling or streaking in grey, green, yellow, red, pink or brown. Some individuals are a uniform brown or black colour.
Ambrosi's cave salamander has short, stout limbs, pointed toes and a short tail and grows to around 12.5 cm (5 in) among them the tail.
Range and habitat
Ambrosi's cave salamander is endemic to a small area of northwestern Italy, occurring at scattered locations in La Spezia province. In the southeast of its distribution, where its range overlaps that of the Italian cave salamander (Speleomantes italicus), the two species sometimes hybridise. Endemic to northwestern Italy, its natural habitats are temperate forests, rocky areas, caves, and subterranean habitats (other than caves).
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
After an elaborate courtship routine, a clutch of a few eggs about 6 mm (0.2 in) long is laid in a concealed location where they are guarded by the female until they hatch directly into juvenile salamanders.
In crisis
It is threatened by habitat loss. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed the Ambrosi's cave salamander as being critically endangered. This is on the basis that it has a very restricted range, its total extent of occurrence being less than 5,000 square kilometres (1,900 sq mi), and suitable habitat may be declining locally.
Salamanders disappear when seeps are capped, caves are disturbed, or a pathogen moves through a mountain range.
Ambrosi's Cave Salamander is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Ambrosi's Cave Salamander, Wikidata item Q1932798. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
