Santa Cruz black salamander

The Santa Cruz black salamander (Aneides niger) is a species of salamander in the family Plethodontidae. It is endemic to the U.S. state of California.[1][2][3]

Santa Cruz black salamander

Vulnerable  (NatureServe)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Order: Urodela
Family: Plethodontidae
Subfamily: Plethodontinae
Genus: Aneides
Species:
A. niger
Binomial name
Aneides niger
Myers & Maslin, 1948

Taxonomy

Originally described by George S. Myers and Thomas P. Maslin in 1948 as a subspecies of the speckled black salamander (A. flavipunctatus), a 2019 taxonomic study found A. flavipunctatus to represent a species complex and A. niger to thus represent a distinct species, and reclassified it as such.[2][4]

Distribution

This is the southernmost member of the A. flavipunctatus complex, and it is disjunct from all other members of the complex. It is restricted to the San Francisco Peninsula of California, where it inhabits San Mateo, Santa Cruz, and western Santa Clara counties.[2][5]

Description

Unlike all other members of the Aneides flavipunctatus complex, adult individuals of this species have an almost uniformly black coloration; juveniles have numerous tiny white spots, as with other members of the complex, that are progressively lost as the individual matures.[4]

References
  1. "NatureServe Explorer 2.0". explorer.natureserve.org. Retrieved 2022-01-02.
  2. "Aneides niger Myers and Maslin, 1948 | Amphibian Species of the World". amphibiansoftheworld.amnh.org. Retrieved 2022-01-02.
  3. "AmphibiaWeb - Aneides niger". amphibiaweb.org. Retrieved 2022-01-02.
  4. Reilly, Sean B.; Wake, David B. (2019-08-01). "Taxonomic revision of black salamanders of the Aneides flavipunctatus complex (Caudata: Plethodontidae)". PeerJ. 7: e7370. doi:10.7717/peerj.7370. ISSN 2167-8359. PMC 6679913. PMID 31396443.
  5. "Santa Cruz Black Salamander - Aneides flavipunctatus niger". www.californiaherps.com. Retrieved 2022-01-02.
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