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| California Tiger Salamander
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Photo by Gary Nafis | ||||||||||||||
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| Ambystoma californiense Gray, 1853 |
The California Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma californiense) is an endangered amphibian native to Northern California. Previously considered to be a Tiger Salamander subspecies, the California was recently designated a separate species.
The California Tiger Salamander is a relatively large, secretive amphibian. Adults can grow to a length of about 19 - 20 cm (7 - 8 inches). It has a stocky body and a broad rounded snout. Adults are black and have yellow or cream spots; larvae are greenish-grey in color. The California Tiger Salamander has protruding eyes with black irises
The California Tiger Salamander is endemicThis article is about the ecological meaning of "endemic". See also endemic (epidemiology). Endemic in biology and ecology means exclusively native to a place or biota. It is in contrast to any one of several terms meaning "not native" (e. adventive, exot to CaliforniaCalifornia is a state located in the western United States, bordering the Pacific Ocean. The most populous and third largest state in the U. California is both physically and demographically diverse. The state's official nickname is "The Golden State", wh. Because it depends on water for reproduction, its habitat is limited to the vicinity of large, fishless vernal pool s or similar water bodies. It occurs at elevations up to 1000 mFor other uses of "metre" and "meter", see Metre (disambiguation). The metre is the basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI: Systeme International d'Unites). It is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in absolute vacu (3200 ftA foot is a non- SI unit of distance or length. The popular belief is that original standard was the length of a man's foot. The average foot length is about 240 mm (9. 4 in) for current Europeans. About 996 of 1000 British men have a foot that is less th).
It occurs in California in Sonoma County and Santa Barbara County, in vernal pool complexes and isolated ponds along the Central Valley from Colusa County to Kern County, and in sag ponds in the coastal range. Both the Sonoma and Santa Barbara populations are listed as endangered since 2000 and 2003, respectively. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently campaigning to list all the populations as threatened. The main threat to the salamanders is habitat destruction through human interaction.
The habitat includes Lake Lagunita at Stanford University, and the need to protect this site is a primary given reason for the cancellation of the Big Game bonfire.