Hobbies And Interests
Physical Description
Biologists describe a slim-bodied, long-toed salamander with relatively short legs and a tail that makes up nearly half of its 4- to 5 1/2-inch length. Colored gray or blue-black, they derive their name from the bright blue speckles that cover their backs, sides and limbs. Their bodies have a segmented appearance due to a dozen vertical or costal grooves across their torsos.
Range, Habitat and Diet
Blue-spotted salamanders range across eastern North America to the Great Lakes and the northern states of the midwest. They inhabit damp, shady broadleaf and evergreen forests and swamps, foraging for food underground or among the leaf litter and decaying logs. They survive cold winters by burrowing into the soil. Insectivorous, they eat worms, centipedes, snails, spiders, and other crawling creatures that share their forest floor habitat. As larvae, they also eat mosquito larvae, and as adults, eat adult mosquitoes.
Defenses Against Predators
The blue-spotted shares a defensive strategy with several other salamander species. When a predator approaches, the blue-spotted draws its eye with violent tail movements. When the predator attacks the tail, the appendage comes off, still twitching, so the salamander can escape and eventually regrow a new tail.The blue-spotted also releases a chemical when attacked, which the University of Michigan's Zoology Museum describes as an unpleasant-tasting "milky noxious liquid." Most predators have learned to leave them alone.
Reproduction and Life Cycle
Blue-spotted salamanders reproduce during March and April when the ground thaws and the snow melts, leaving behind pools of standing water called vernal ponds. As the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries &Wildlife describes, "an elaborate courtship... occurs including approach, contact, nudging, and tail-fanning routines." Afterwards, the female collects the male's spermatophore in her cloaca and lays clusters totaling up to 500 eggs in and around the vernal pond. Ordinarily, the eggs hatch into larvae within a month. Using tail fins to navigate and gills to breathe, the legless larvae live in water until legs and lungs develop by late summer.
They can also cross-breed with closely related species such as the Jefferson, spotted and tiger salamanders. In the case of Jefferson salamanders, the resulting hybrids carry up to five sets of somatic-cell chromosomes instead of the normal two, and usually reproduce using the sperm of an unhybridized blue-spotted or Jefferson salamander through a process called gynogenetic reproduction.