C. e. popei vs. C. e. e.

Aside from the gold/yellow spots on popei, are there any other physical characteristics that ensicauda has from popei?

Thanks
~Aaron

Aaron, I see you never got a response to this. Did you ever find out the answer? I suspect the colors may be the only discernable difference, but if there are others, I'd like to know.

So far, I am still waiting for an answer. I might have to wait for my e. ensi larva to become adults in order to tell.

~Aaron

Hi aaron,

there are more ways to tell the difference,
but with pictures it is easier.

i attached a male and a female ensicauda.
now see the difference?

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Greetings Reinder

hi aaron i think i misunderstood your message,

another way to see whether you have popei or the nominate from is that when they are in breeding season the males of ensicauda ensicauda develop the blue shine on the tail like in my picture above and popei doesn't have that at all.
the larvae of popei do grow much faster too, at same temperatures.

hope to have helped you enough.

Reinder

thank you for the help, Reinder.

~Aaron

Reinder,
popei also does have blue color but maybe smaller.

Great discussion topic Aaron. Perhaps I can be of some help as I have 20 adult C.e.p and 20 adult C.e.e right here for comparison.

I was surprised not to have noticed before what Reinder pointed out. Indeed, about five of my ensicauda males have very evident sheens on their tails, while none of my C.e.p males have anything comparable.

What I did notice as striking was that the tail of a C.e.p male that was engaged in courtship behaviour...



lacks a discernable sheen but ends in a filament,



while the tails of the male C.e.ensicauda are rounded.




Don't know if this is a general rule, but it's intriguing and it'd be interesting if this can be confirmed to be a difference between the two...

As for what Kei said, I wouldn't rule that out either -- perhaps, on closer inspection, there is some very faint coloration... -- and I'll post a pic if I find a more evident C.e.p sheen. Please post a pic if you have one, Kei!

Tim

By the way Reinder, that's an absolutely gorgeous female C.e.e! Is she captive bred?

15 of mine are of the normal type, namely dark backs with no markings whatsoever, and four look pretty much like the one in your first pic. But I do have one oddly colored one that I plan to post a pic of someday!

I recently read a post on a Japanese discussion forum from somebody who is regarded as very knowledgable about Cynops and who has examined many C.e.e in their wild state on Amami Ooshima (island). He estimated that red markings occur in 10-20% of them, while the popei-type white/yellow/gold flecks occur in only 1-2%.

Hi All,
This is different then the descriptions published by Sparreboom (Sparreboom, Max, Maintenance and Breeding of newts of the genus cynops, 1998, British Herpetological Bulletin 63: 3-12). While Sparreboom only had a small number to deal with (14 individuals) all of the animals were collected from Amami-oshimu and were described as follows; " All individuals of the nominate race are uniformly chocolate brown on the dorsum with yellow dorso-lateral stripes in some specimens, whereas all specimens of popei have a pattern of more or less bright-colored spots on the back which is black (Inger 1947)". The popei were collected by the author with another researcher Ota for a previous publication (Sparreboom, Max; Ota, Hidetoshi, 1995, The life-history and reproductive behavior of Cynops ensicauda popei (Amphibia: Salmandridae), Herpetological Journal 5:310-315) which also does not mention any differences in tail morphology as shown in the above pics. The original description for C. e. ensicauda (Stejnegar, Leonhard, Herpetology of Japan and Adjacent Territory) also does not list any color variations for the nominate form (as this is also from only three animals also from Amami-oshimu). If he can document the pattern variation then this should be published into one of the journals and not lost as hearsay evidence.
Ed

Hi Ed. Hahaha, you beat me to it! I was just now in the process of posting the same info from Sparreboom's report which -- for those who want to see it in its entirety (?) -- is posted at this site:

http://www.callisto.ru/amphibia/max/mspage.files/cynops.htm

On tail morphology, this only occurred to me at a very late hour here and I didn't have time to look them all over carefully to confirm it. This evening, I'll try to find time to scrutinize them for differences and post the results.

By the way, Ed, I never did get that C.e.e fecal sample checked out with the vet for parasite identification. But the newt in question is recovering remarkably well and it remains very lively. I toyed with the idea of using discus dewormer hamburger meal, but decided against it, partly because I was told it's only effective for intestinal worms and partly because of safety doubts.

Cheers
Tim

Hi all,

some comment on what have been said above,
hi kei, never seen popei with coloration on th4 tail? a picture would be great yes.
and yeah tj or tim this is a captive bred female of mine,i have 10 adult specimens wich some are bred by myself and the parents come all from max sparreboom, and 3 popei since i have not much room and they breed easily i think.
yeah i have one male wich i think is abnormal to in coloration
i posted a pic somewhere here in this message,
is this abnormal (kei and tj) or is this a normal male wich you see often?

thats all for now , hope to have added much info on the asked question

greetz to all

Reinder

Reinder, that degree of red/orange is pretty abnormal for a C.e.e -- as far as I know. Lucky you! I still have to get around to posting a pic of the oddest one I have...

Ed, regarding Sparreboom's description of his 14, which part of the description were you saying differed from mine? If it's about color, he spoke of "yellow" dorso-lateral stripes but whether this is yellow or orange, even red, is subjective. I see it as orange, the Japanese guy I mentioned says red and maybe it seems yellow to Sparreboom. It also may depend on the locality where they were caught...

I chose my 20 from a group of 100, so got a pretty good look at possible variations (at least for the locality/localities where they were caught -- and also assuming they weren't specifially selected based on their phenotype)

I'd say about a dozen or so had dorso-lateral stripes, about the same ratio cited above.

One thing that I found interesting was that while I was in the shop looking for interesting dorso-lateral variations, at least two Japanese customers rang seeking any with yellow bellies. The bellies of most were orange but there were some yellowish ones (though apparantly not enough to satisfy these customers). I had thought yellow=CB due to the lack of carotenes in the diet?

On the tail business, I rechecked my adult popei ( 30+ actually, not 20) and found only one male with a filament so I really can't tell what, if anything, this signifies. I'd sure like to know whether anybody else who keeps Cynops ensicauda popei has noticed such a filament in their C.e.p

by the way, the Caudate Central caresheet for Cynops pyrrhogaster mentions that breeding C.p males' tails develop "a small filament at the tip (depending on subspecies)" -- something I've also noticed this before in some of my C.p. It'd also be interesting to know (maybe in another thread) WHICH subspecies of pyrrhogaster develop such a filament and which don't -- as yet another clue to help us identify what we have. Anybody have information regarding this?

Tim