This beautiful creature is a salamander and belongs to the Family Aphuimidae. The genus and species name is Amphiuma means. The common name for this salamander is the two toed salamander because the salamander only has two toes. This picture was taken at Dixie Plantation, which is located in Hollywood South Carolina. The College of Charleston own's this land and offers the opportunity for different classes to go and explore the organisms that reside on it. This Amphiuma means was caught in a trap laid in black swamp water. This salamander is very aquatic. This is shown by the small limbs, the limbs would not be able to support this eightteen inch salamander on land for long. There are other paedomorphic traits characterized in this salamander, and example would be the lack of eye lids. The size of the salamander and lack of gills makes one to believe this salamander is in a adult stage. This creature secreted a slime all over the hands of whoever came in contact with the organism, this slime made the organism almost impossible to hold. This salamander put up a huge fight when being removed from the trap, and made it apparent it did not like being out of the water. This find on the field trip made me very excited because I could easily identify the salamander. The eel shape body, four small limbs, and two toes on each limb made the identification very easy. I was a little uneasy about crossing the dark swamp water. I finally over came that fear and made it to the trap way across the water. Finding something so unique in the trap gave me a lot more confidence in going into the swamp water and made the trip so much more fun for me.
1 comment:
Since the larval stage is very short, we wouldn't expect to see external gills even in fairly small amphiumas. How large do they get, relative to this individual?
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