Endangered
Pseudoeurycea mystax
Pseudoeurycea mystax
Pseudoeurycea mystax is a salamander in the family Plethodontidae (order Caudata), recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The type series consists of two specimens, the male holotype measuring 47.5 mm (1.87 in) and the female allotype 42 mm (1.7 in) in snout–vent length. The dorsum is gray in its ground color with faint traces of pink especially on the snout, and with scattered black dots. The tail has some conspicuous, large white blotches.
The tail is shorter than the body, with total lengths of about 85 and 69 mm (3.3 and 2.7 in) for the two specimens, respectively.
Range and habitat
It is endemic to Mexico and only known from the area of its type locality in the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca near Ayutla, Oaxaca.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Salamanders hide under logs, in seeps, or in caves. They do not commute across a dry valley.
Eggs and damp skin make amphibians quick to vanish from a drained wetland or a forest stripped of litter.
In crisis
It tolerates some habitat disturbance as some small subpopulations survive in tiny fragments of remaining habitat. Habitat loss caused by agriculture, logging, and human settlement is a major threat for this species as only small fragments of original habitat remain.
Salamanders disappear when seeps are capped, caves are disturbed, or a pathogen moves through a mountain range.
Pseudoeurycea mystax 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 Pseudoeurycea mystax, Wikidata item Q2212163. 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.
