Critically Endangered
Taylor's salamander
Ambystoma taylori
Taylor's salamander is a salamander in the family Ambystomatidae (order Caudata) — Ambystoma taylori, recorded as Critically Endangered.
The salamander
It was first described in 1982 but had been known to science prior to that.
Range and habitat
The A. Taylori habitat in Lake Alchichica is brackish, with a salinity of 9.2 g/L (0.00033 lb/cu in). The lake's water has a temperature range of 18–21 °C. Taylor's salamander is a salamander found only in Laguna Alchichica, a high-altitude (2,290 m (7,510 ft) above sea level) crater lake to the southwest of Perote, Mexico.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
It is a neotenic species, that means it retains its caudal fin and external gills into adulthood, never undergoing complete metamorphosis. It is entirely aquatic, breeding and laying its eggs in the same lake where it lives.
It is a neotenic salamander, breeding while still in the larval state and not undergoing metamorphosis.
In crisis
The lake in that it lives is becoming increasingly saline and less suitable for the salamander, that is declining in numbers. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has rated it as being "critically endangered".
Salamanders disappear when seeps are capped, caves are disturbed, or a pathogen moves through a mountain range.
Taylor's 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 Taylor's salamander, Wikidata item Q2512313. 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.
