Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum)

Awhile back on 3-18-10, Dr. Boone's Herpetology class went to Indian Run Wild Life Preserve in Reily, Ohio to go Herp hunting. We entered the Preserve after parking near a cemetery off of Highway 732. We walked up a decaying asphalt drive that opened up into a visitors area with gazebos. Past this, we continue through a forest of neatly spaced white pine that had been planted by man decades ago. On the other side of this forest was a pond surrounded on one side by a drift fence that the T.A. Tammy had set up for an experiment. Any Herps who came to the fence were guided along the length of it into small pits full of water. This is one way to keep track of the population that lives in the area. Anyway, after noting the layout of the area in our field books, we all waded into the pond. Others walked around its perimeter to the other side in an attempt to track down an unseen frog making calls. During my jaunt through the water, I found a long string of frog eggs that had been attached to the limb of a tree that had fallen half way into the pond. Others found tadpoles and one rather large dead turtle. Sometime later people started to turn over logs a few feet away from the edge of the pond to find a large number of Spotted Salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum). I didn’t want to miss out on the action, so I waddled out of the pond and began to do the same thing. I turned over one particularly large log to find what was later explained to me to be a male Spotted Salamander with a swollen cloaca full of sperm. It was their mating season at the time, so that didn’t really surprise me at all.

I do not have a picture of the specific specimen that I found, but they all pretty much look the same. Here is a pic of another Spotted Salamander found that day.


The Spotted Salamander can grow between almost five to eight inches long and is usually a dark color. It gets its name from a collection of up to fifty bright yellow spots that cover its body. They often breed early in spring after migrating to woodland ponds. Thus, the area we went to is a prime example of this. They are often found under rocks or boards (in our case logs) in moist environments. The species tends to have four fingers on the front legs and five on the back.

(Jim R. McClanahan)