Endangered
Italian Cave Salamander
Speleomantes italicus
Italian Cave Salamander is a salamander in the family Plethodontidae (order Caudata) — Speleomantes italicus, recorded as Endangered and tied to Italy, Vatican City, and San Marino.
Appearance
It is dark in colour with mottled reddish or yellowish markings and a dark belly. In the north of its range it is more variable in colour and sometimes hybridises with Ambrosi's cave salamander (Speleomantes ambrosii).
The Italian cave salamander is a slender species with short limbs and grows to a length of about 12.5 cm (5 in) among them a short tail.
Range and habitat
The Italian cave salamander is native to northern Italy where it is found in the northern and central Apennine Mountains. Its range extends from the Province of Lucca and Province of Reggio Emilia southwards to the Province of Pescara. It is found in wooded valleys, on rocky outcrops and in caves and underground waters, often in limestone areas, at altitudes of up to 1,600 metres (5,200 ft) above sea level.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
It is agile, climbing on cave walls and rocky outcrops. It seems to be an opportunistic hunter with a wide range of invertebrate prey.
In crisis
It is threatened by habitat loss.
Salamanders disappear when seeps are capped, caves are disturbed, or a pathogen moves through a mountain range.
Italian Cave 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 Italian Cave Salamander, Wikidata item Q1675156. 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.
