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Awesome! Looking forward to tonight!

Hello Jeroen

Your Salamandra seem to have two breeding peaks in the Autumn and Spring. Do you see the same animals at both times or is a different set? I guess possible for males but not so likely for females?

Hello all

you flatland people, living in areas with climate, strong influenced by the sea.
Looking for Salamandra at night, while I here in Salzburg have to scratch my cars windscreen every day from 6.00 p.m. to 9.00 a.m.

Following KLEWEN (1988), mating in Salamandra salamandra takes place in autumn, and the babies are born in next early spring.
He also reports on this behaviour. Males dont care for the sex. They climb on everything during mating time: males, females, youngs, "Triturus" and even attrapes.

I have OCR scanned the mating biologie out of Klewen. You may read it here:


So all not German language speakers may translate it with Google, ImTranslator (FF), etc.

KLEWEN, R. (1988): Die Landsalamander Europas 1; Neue Brehm Bücherei Band 584. 184 pp.

Mario

Nice pictures!! When it comes to winter herping you can almost always count on salamanders after a nice rainfall. :O)
I've never been able to observe any kind of salamander mating behavior; the pictures and videos are very interesting, thanks for sharing. Very cool pdf, I would've also assumed that the fire salamanders are on hormones like male common toads.
I was able to go out with a friend last night and we found fire salamanders, alpine newts and a common toad. Temperatures were around 8°C after dark and it had rained nicely before we arrived at the spot.

Great Stuff, I wish those little beasts had been a little quicker and reached England before we got separated, its ideal for them where I live Ive contented myself with these Grey Seals instead (last Sunday).

Mario Schweiger wrote:Following KLEWEN (1988), mating in Salamandra salamandra takes place in autumn, and the babies are born in next early spring.
He also reports on this behaviour. Males dont care for the sex. They climb on everything during mating time: males, females, youngs, "Triturus" and even attrapes.

Thanks, Mario. Two remarks:
- While the pattern of mating in autumn and larvae deposition in early spring is of course well-known and generally true for populations in Central and Western Europe (yes, Belgium is part of W Europe, in contrast to the definition on this forum, haha!), it has been shown to be clearly a rough generalisation. Just yesterday found a fresh larva in a tiny human footprint puddle in the mud.
- They do not climb "on" but under the females, as I had forgotten myself.

Bit of rain and 5-7°C = "only" 7 animals today.

Winter's (nearly) over!

First 4 'manders out last night.

Hey Jeroen,

that´s nice too see! Incredible that you found 4 of them already...

I guess I have to wait a few more days / weeks for the first Bavarian salamanders to come out again. There was an ugly, blizzard-like snowstorm just today and heaps of snow are still lining up at the sides of the streets.

Servus,
Laura

Laura Tiemann wrote:I guess I have to wait a few more days / weeks for the first Bavarian salamanders to come out again. There was an ugly, blizzard-like snowstorm just today and heaps of snow are still lining up at the sides of the streets.

My feeling today is we have to wait until June!