Endangered
Frosted flatwoods salamander
Ambystoma cingulatum
The frosted flatwoods salamander is an endangered salamander species native to the Southeastern United States.
Appearance
Typical coloration consists of a background of brownish- to purplish-black overlaid with narrow gray or silvery-white reticulations (net-like markings), bands, or diffuse spotting. The gilled aquatic larvae are distinctly colored, having a series of bold brown and yellow longitudinal stripes.
It is a small (9–13.5 cm total length), elongated species of mole salamander.
Range and habitat
The frosted flatwoods salamander has a very narrow geographic distribution, occurring only in the southeastern coastal plain of the United States. It inhabits seasonally wet pine flatwoods and pine savannas east of the Apalachicola River in northern Florida, southern South Carolina, and southern Georgia. The frosted flatwoods salamander breeds in shallow, ephemeral ponds, generally characterized by an overstory of pond cypress (Taxodium ascendens) and black tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica var. Biflora) and a diverse understory of native grasses and herbs.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Adult salamanders spend most of the year underground in burrows, especially those of crayfish, where they are presumed to feed on a variety of small invertebrates, but the few existing prey records are mostly earthworms. From September through December, adults migrate from surrounding upland habitats to their natal wetlands during rainfall events associated with passing cold fronts.
Courtship occurs within dry pond basins or very shallow water, where the female accepts a spermatophore that has been deposited on the substrate by the male. Embryos develop quickly within the egg capsule and will hatch in response to inundation by rising water levels in the pond basins.
In crisis
The frosted flatwoods salamander is an endangered salamander species native to the Southeastern United States. One published study documents the extirpation of a sizable breeding population as a result of a common silvicultural practice of converting natural pine forest to ditched and bedded slash pine plantation. Further degradation of remaining frosted flatwoods salamander habitat has occurred as a result of alteration of natural fire patterns.
As a result of these ongoing land use activities, populations are now extremely small, discontinuous, and widely fragmented throughout the range. It is currently restricted to a handful of remaining sites in Florida and Georgia, and has an especially tenuous presence in South Carolina.
Salamanders disappear when seeps are capped, caves are disturbed, or a pathogen moves through a mountain range.
Frosted flatwoods salamander is 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 Frosted flatwoods salamander, Wikidata item Q2256142. 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.
