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Adult in defensive pose,
Contra Costa County |
Sub-adult, Contra Costa County |
Adult, Contra Costa County |
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Adult, Contra Costa County |
Adult, Contra Costa County |
Adult, Contra Costa County |
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Sub-adult, Contra Costa County |
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| Adult, Contra Costa County |
Adult, Contra Costa County, with white defensive secretions on the tail. |
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Adult, Santa Cruz Mountains, Santa Clara County |
Adult, Contra Costa County |
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Adult, and juvenile Contra Costa County |
Tiny juvenile, Contra Costa County |
Tiny juvenile, Contra Costa County |
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Adult, Sierra Foothills, Tuolumne County |
Adult, Santa Cruz County |
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Adult from the intergrade zone with E. e. eschscholtzii - Monterey Ensatina, coastal Santa Cruz County.
© Scott Peden |
Adult, Solano County © Dave Feliz |
Juvenile, Contra Costa County |
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This adult and juvenile were found near Twain Harte in Tuolumne County, which is in the contact or hybrid zone between E. e. xanthoptica and E. e. platensis.
© Taryn Horn |
Some Ensatina, like this one, are found with a missing tail. The tail is easily broken off, and sometimes it will be released by the salamander to distract a predator, but it will grow back. |
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Tail is constricted at the base |
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| Females With Eggs |
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| On August 3rd, Joe Garcia found these intergrade Ensatinas attending their eggs under a board underneath a house in Monterey County. Female Ensatinas stay with their eggs to protect them until they hatch. © Joe Garcia |
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| On September 19th, Joe returned to the crawl space, looked under the board, and found that most of
the eggs of one female had just hatched, with at least 10 hatchlings still next to the eggs. © Joe Garcia |
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| Two days later, all of the eggs of both females had hatched and the juveniles were still with the females. © Joe Garcia |
Habitat |
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Habitat, Contra Costa County |
Habitat, Contra Costa County |
Habitat, Tuolumne County |
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Habitat, Merced County |
A careful look underneath the fallen bark of this dead tree one wet winter afternoon turned up one Arboreal Salamander, two Coast Range Newts, one Yellow-eyed Ensatina, and 12 California Slender Salamanders, illustrating how dead wood and bark on a forest floor are an important microhabitat for salamanders and other wildlife.
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Habitat, San Mateo County |
| Short Videos |
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| Views of two Yellow-eyed Ensatina, the first from Contra Costa County, the second from the Santa Cruz Mountains. |
A couple of adult salamanders discovered out on the surface at night in Marin County |
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Description |
Size |
| Adult Ensatina measure from 1 1/2 - 3 1/5 inches long ( 3.8 - 8.1 cm) from snout to vent, and 3 - 6 inches (7.5 - 15.5 cm) in total length. |
| Appearance |
A medium-sized salamander. The legs are long, and the body is relatively short, with 12 - 13 costal grooves. Nasolabial grooves are present. The tail is rounded and constricted at the base, which will differentiate this salamander from its neighbors. Males have longer, more slender tails than females, and a shorter snout with an enlarged upper lip, while the bodies of females are usually shorter and fatter than the bodies of males.
This subspecies is orange-brown to dark brown above, with orange coloring below, on the eyelids, and on the sides of the head, tail and body. Yellow to orange coloring is present on the base of the limbs. Young are dark above, with yellow or orange coloring on the base of the limbs.
A bright yellow patch on the eye gives this salamander its common name. |
| Behavior and Natural History |
A member of family Plethodontidae, the Plethodontid or Lungless Salamanders.
Lungless Salamanders breathe through their skin which requires them to live in damp environments on land and to move about on the ground only during times of high humidity. (In California, they do not inhabit streams or bodies of water, but they are capable of surviving for some time if they fall into water.)
Lungless salamanders are distinguished by their naso-labial grooves, which are vertical slits between the nostrils and upper lip that are lined with glands used in chemoreception. All California Lungless Salamanders lay eggs in moist places on land. The young hatch from the egg directly into a tiny terrestrial salamander with the same body form as an adult. (They do not hatch in the water and begin their lives as tiny swimming larvae breathing through gills, as occurs with other types of salamanders.)
Ensatina live in relatively cool moist places on land becoming most active on rainy or wet nights when temperatures are moderate. They stay underground during hot and dry periods where they are able to tolerate considerable dehydration. They may also continue to feed underground during the summer months. High-altitude populations are also inactive during severe winter cold. Longevity has been estimated at up to 15 years.
Adults have been observed marking and defending territories outside of the breeding season.
When severely threatened, an Ensatina may drop its tail to distract the attention of a predator towards the writhing tail so the animal can crawl away to safety. The tail can be re-grown. The tail also contains a high density of poison glands. When disturbed, an Ensatina will stand tall in a stiff-legged defensive posture with its back swayed and the tail raised up and secrete a milky white substance from the tail, swaying the it from side to side. This noxious substance repels predators, although some experienced predators learn to eat all but the tail. If a person gets the poison on their lips, they will experience some numbness for several hours.1 |
| Sound |
| Rarely, Ensatina make a hissing sound, similar to the hissing of a snake, when threatened. (Stebbins 1951; Brodie, 1978.) |
| Diet and Feeding |
| Ensatinas eat a wide variety of invertebrates, including worms, ants, beetles, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, sow bugs, and snails. They expell a relatively long sticky tongue from the mouth to capture the prey and pull it back into the mouth where it is crushed and killed, then swallowed. Typically feeding is done using sit-and-wait ambush tactics, but sometimes Ensatinas will slowly stalk their prey. |
| Reproduction and Young |
Reproduction is terrestrial. Breeding takes place in Fall and Spring, but may also occur throughout the winter. Stebbins described an elaborate Ensatina courtship involving the male rubbing his body and head against the female eventually dropping a sperm capsule onto the ground which the female picks up with her cloaca. (A description and illustration of this courtship can be seen here.) The female can store the sperm until she determines the time is right to fertilize her eggs.
At the end of the rainy season, typically April or May, females retreat to their aestivation site under bark, in rotting logs, or in underground animal burrows, and lay 3 - 25 eggs, with 9 - 16 being average. Females remain with the eggs to guard them until they hatch. (You can see pictures of two Ensatinas with their eggs and hatchlings here.)
In labs, eggs have hatched in 113 - 177 days. The young hatch fully formed and probably leave the nesting site with the first saturating Fall rains, or, at higher elevations, after the snow melts.
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| Range |
This subspecies of Ensatina is endemic to California, ranging from from near Healdsburg in Sonoma County, south along the east side of the San Francisco Bay to Santa Cruz County. A separate population occurs in the foothills of the central Sierra Nevada mountains. Yellow-eyed Ensatina were probably distributed from the Bay Area across the central valley when the climate there was cooler and moister, but as it became drier, two separate populations were formed.
Ensatina is the most widely-distributed plethodontid salamander in the West, ranging from an isolated location in the mountains of Baja California north along the extreme northwest coast of Baja California, through most of California excluding the deserts, the central valley, and high elevations in the mountains, continuing north into Oregon and Washington west of the Cascades Mountains, and farther north into Canada along the coast of southern British Columbia. Also found on Vancouver Island. |
| Habitat |
| Inhabits moist shaded evergreen and deciduous forests and oak woodlands, mixed grassland, and chaparral. Found under rocks, logs, other debris, especially bark that has peeled off and fallen beside logs and trees. Most common where there is a lot of coarse woody debris on the forest foor. In dry or very cold weather, stays inside moist logs, animal burrows, under roots, woodrat nests, under rocks. |
| Taxonomic Notes |
Hybridizes with E. e. platensis in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Ensatina eschscholtzii is typically treated as a "ring" species, consisting of 7 subspecies:
E. e. croceater
E. e. eschscholtzii
E. e. klauberi
E. e. oregonensis
E. e. picta
E. e. platensis
E. e. xanthoptica
These subspecies
ring the Central Valley but do not interbreed where the rings overlap in Southern California (and possibly in the central Sierra Nevada.) These contact zones are still under study.
Some researchers see Ensatina eschscholtzii as two or more species forming a superspecies complex, recognizing E. e. klauberi, found at the southern end of the ring, as a separate species - Ensatina klauberi.
E. e. eschscholtzii has been found to hybridize with intergrades of E. e. croceator and E. e. klauberi.
Charles W. Brown explains the taxonomy of the Ensatina complex in detail, describing it as "a classical example of Darwinian evolution by gradualism; an accumulation of micro mutations that is now leading to the formation of a new species."
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| Conservation Issues (Conservation Status) |
| None. |
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Taxonomy |
| Family |
Plethodontidae |
Lungless Salamanders |
| Genus |
Ensatina |
Ensatinas |
| Species |
Eschscholtzii |
Ensatina |
Subspecies
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xanthoptica |
Yellow-eyed Ensatina |
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Original Description |
Ensatina eschscholtzii - Gray, 1850 - Cat. Spec. Amph. Coll. Brit. Mus., Batr. Grad., p. 48
Ensatina eschscholtzii xanthoptica - Stebbins, 1949 - Univ. California Publ. Zool., Vol. 48, No. 6, p. 407, pl. 11, figs. 2 and 12
from Original Description Citations for the Reptiles and Amphibians of North America © Ellin Beltz
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Meaning of the Scientific Name |
Ensatina: Latin - sword shaped/similar to, possibly referring to the teeth.
eschscholtzii: honors Johann F. Eschscholtz.
xanthoptica: Greek - yellow eye.
from Scientific and Common Names of the Reptiles and Amphibians of North America - Explained © Ellin Beltz
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Alternate Names |
None
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Related California Salamanders |
Large-blotched Ensatina
Monterey Ensatina
Oregon Ensatina
Painted Ensatina
Sierra Nevada Ensatina
Yellow-blotched Ensatina
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More Information and References |
Natureserve Explorer
California Dept. of Fish and Game
AmphibiaWeb
Charles W. Brown's Ensatina Web Site
Stebbins, Robert C. A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians. 3rd Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.
Behler, John L., and F. Wayne King. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians. Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
Powell, Robert., Joseph T. Collins, and Errol D. Hooper Jr. A Key to Amphibians and Reptiles of the Continental United States and Canada. The University Press of Kansas, 1998.
Bartlett, R. D. & Patricia P. Bartlett. Guide and Reference to the Amphibians of Western North America (North of Mexico) and Hawaii. University Press of Florida, 2009.
Bishop, Sherman C. Handbook of Salamanders. Cornell University Press, 1943.
Lannoo, Michael (Editor). Amphibian Declines: The Conservation Status of United States Species. University of California Press, June 2005.
Petranka, James W. Salamanders of the United States and Canada. Smithsonian Institution, 1998.
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The following status listings come from the Special Animals List which is published several times each year by the California Department of Fish and Game.
This salamander is not included on the Special Animals List, which indicates that there are no significant conservation concerns for it in California.
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Organization
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Status Listing
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| U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) |
None |
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| California Endangered Species Act (CESA) |
None |
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| California Department of Fish and Game |
None |
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| Bureau of Land Management |
None |
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| USDA Forest Service |
None |
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| Natureserve Global Conservation Status Ranks |
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World Conservation Union - IUCN Red List
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