Species of Cave Salamander?

[hewhocaves]

I took these photos in a Greenbrier Co., WV cave this past weekend and wanted to share them with you all. As it's a fairly well known cave, I'm not going to openly divulge the name for fear of having the kiddies trampled over (we noticed that some were leaving the pool already and were now in nearby pools). But since seeing baby salamanders is pretty rare to begin with, I thought that the photos might be useful to someone. The little buggers were barely as long as the width of my thumbnail (~.5") and appear to still have their gills. They still seemed more prone to swiming and floating than stopping and walking.

My first thought about their species was Eurycea Lucifuga - the cave salamander. It's pretty common. But the references I found said that the young were yellow and not spotted at all. So does anyone know which species they belong to?

John

Pool with caver for scale


Closer picture of the pool

Individual shot

[Lynn]

Perhaps it is a larval stage Gyrinophilus?

[Teresa]

It very well could be a variety of lucifuga. Dark sided lucifuga start out black and lighten to olive/yellow/orange with spots. They also are a subspecies; can interbreed with standard E. lucifuga.

I've seen little dark-sideds like this.

[hewhocaves]

It very well could be a variety of lucifuga. Dark sided lucifuga start out black and lighten to olive/yellow/orange with spots. They also are a subspecies; can interbreed with standard E. lucifuga.

I've seen little dark-sideds like this.

I presume you mean Eurycea longicauda melanopleura. According to Bulletin #11, the nearest ones of those are only a drainage basin away (and Bull. 11 isn't an exhaustive list by any means) which is something llike four or five miles away. Googling E-l-m for images shows quite a range of colors, btw.

So it's possible. Very possible. Someone also suggested it's a species of Plethanon which is also likely. I guess the idea is that it's probably not going to be positively identfied from the one photo. Which is a tad annoying but not surprising.

John

[itabot]

I saw these in a lake in Colorado. They surprised me!
I think they are salamanders. The lake was Called Lizard Lake.

[nemotin]

They appear to be hatchling Eurycea lucifuga (Cave Salamander). Definitely do not look like Gyrinophilus or Pseudotriton. Also, can't be Plethodon as that group does not have a larval stage.