Salamandra keepers please report in!

I am a Salamandra enthusiast but am disappointed at the lack of people interested in/keeping Salamandra here in the U.S.A. It would be beneficial for all keepers to come out of the dark and start sharing information and experiences. I would like to see this section of the forum more active. I know there have got to be more people serious into Fire Salamanders than are publically known. I understand some people like to keep to themselves but it is a shame to keep all the knowledge private.

So....I would like for everyone keeping Salamandra to check in on this thread. It would be good to know how long you have been keeping Salamandra and a general idea of what species/sub-species and localities you keep. Also...it would be nice to have a couple new discussion topics every week which receive more than one or two replies.

I'll start with both.

My current collection is:

S. s. terrestris ( Solling yellow and Solling red)
S. s. gigliolii
S. s. gallaica (Coimbra, Salvatierra, Serra de Grandola, Serra de Arrabida)
S. s. longirostris
S. corsica

I have been serious into Salamandra for about three years so most all of my stock is still too young to breed.

My question for this week is about Salamandra infraimmaculata. I would like to know the differences in type locality and physical characteristics between S. i. infraimmaculata, S. i. orientalis, and S. i. semenovi. Pehaps someone can point me in the right direction to papers which originally described them or someone who has firsthand knowledge of the complex.


It is my hope to make this a more informative forum. There are virtually no keepers of Fire Salamanders here in the U.S. (to my knowledge) and absolutely no literature in English. Some of you Europeans please chime in!

Travis

Hi Travis

I keep various forms of salamandra here in the uk, i have kept fires before for many years and only recently rekindled my love for them.

I keep

S s terrestris
S s bejarae
S s salamandra
S s gigliolli
S s algira tingitana
S s fastuosa.


Most are adult pairs, but have youngsters too.

I have to admit to not knowing much about the infraimaculata sub species, but believe they are more streamlined than the terrestris type and can grow somewhat larger,

Hope this is of help!!

Good luck with this post


Ben

I'm keeping:
Salamandra s. morenica
S.s. terrestris striped
S. s. bernardezi
S.s. fastuosa
S.s. gallaica (? , Sintra, and Serra De Arrabida)

I've heard from a commercial importer that their will not be a large volume of adult fire salamanders imported to the U.S. this year like their have been in the recent past. I think regulations are being enforced and their is not as much fire salamander laundering going on. Most of the fire salamanders that came in commercially have not had local data with them.

I'm only keeping S. s. salamandra at this time, though I'd certainly like to work with some of the others.

Travis, Good thread hope we all can get some help from it. Unfortunately I do not keep infraimmacualta, orientalis, or semenovi. I wish I did! perhaps in the future?
I have only recently began to have fire Samanadra in my collection and enjoy them very much.
Some have breed for me most recently S. alfredschmidti. I also have some other species that are gravid now and hope to see the results soon. My current collection includes but is not limited to.

S.alfredschmidti
S.algrira tingitana
S.almanzoris
S.bejarea
S.fastuosa
S.gallica
S.gigliolii
S.salamandra
S.terrestris

I would like to hear from some of the keepers, with proven suggestions on breeding differences between each species/sub species. This is a huge and much varied group of animals, I look forward to learning new information about them.

michael said:

I'm keeping:
I've heard from a commercial importer that their will not be a large volume of adult fire salamanders imported to the U.S. this year like their have been in the recent past. I think regulations are being enforced and their is not as much fire salamander laundering going on. Most of the fire salamanders that came in commercially have not had local data with them.

Click to expand...

Hooray!!! I'm glad to hear this guys. I hope there won't be any more imported WC salamandra from Europe! People interested in this species will have to look for CB specimens enocouraging captive breeding of Salamandras.

Francesco

benw said:

I have to admit to not knowing much about the infraimaculata sub species, but believe they are more streamlined than the terrestris type and can grow somewhat larger

Click to expand...

I do not know of any of these subspecies in captivity, but i would be interested to hear of anyone who has/had them in the past to hear of their experiences.

I believe that there is still some work to be done taxonomically on this species, and that some eastern populations of S.s.salamandra have more in common with infraimmaculata than salamandra.

will_j said:

I do not know of any of these subspecies in captivity, but i would be interested to hear of anyone who has/had them in the past to hear of their experiences.

I believe that there is still some work to be done taxonomically on this species, and that some eastern populations of S.s.salamandra have more in common with infraimmaculata than salamandra.

Click to expand...

Will, I know of quite a few people in Europe keeping the infraimmaculata group and they are certainly a different salamander all-together from S.s.salamandra but you may be right about the lack of taxonomic work. I hope someone will give us some insight.

Travis

I forgot to add that i am getting a group of 4 inframaculata orientalis later this month, I will post a pic once they are settled in


Ben

I'm unlikely to ever be big into Salamandra, but I do think they are beautiful and I hope to see lots of CB available in future years.

I have a group of 2:1 S. s. fastuosa (no locality, and therefore no guarantee that they are even this subspecies). I would certainly like to have a source for information on the specifics of breeding them. For now, I would say I am just "maintaining" them, not really trying to breed them. I have all 3 kept together in a standard terrestrial setup. They just get my normal basement temperatures.

Well, to start with I have

4 S.salamandra
3 S.s.gallaica
3 S.s. Bernardezi

It would be nice to see more pictures of everyone's Fire salamaders?

and here is a picture of one I got from Travis last year.

Nice pic John


Here is one of my gigliolli, they were on the hunt and moving round well, not the best, but you get the idea,

Ben

beefsteak said:

Well, to start with I have

4 S.salamandra
3 S.s.gallaica
3 S.s. Bernardezi

It would be nice to see more pictures of everyone's Fire salamaders?

and here is a picture of one I got from Travis last year.

Click to expand...

John,

That is a beautiful gallaica! I kept 10 and none of mine even come close to that...go figure. How large is it?

Travis

benw said:

Nice pic John


Here is one of my gigliolli, they were on the hunt and moving round well, not the best, but you get the idea,

Ben

Click to expand...

Ben,

Beautiful gigliolii.....and it looks like you keep them in a nice naturalistic setting too.

Travis

Hi Travis,

I keep Salamandra for over 20 years now. I can send you papers on Salamandra infraimmaculata, but to be hounest the differences in subspecies is not yet clarified. Send me a private e-mail. Only semenovi is pretty clear as they have an isolated distribution and clear difference in their coloration pattern. The difference between S. i. infraimmaculata and S. i orientalis are very small to my opinion, perhaps they are on a genetical level, but from all specimen I have seen in the wild (Turkey mainly) the differences in coloration are small. I hope to write an article on it soon (but still have to fnish some others first).

By the way, I am glad if the selling of wild caught Salamandra in the US is over. They were mainly imported from the Ukraïne for the last years as far as I know. There are enough breeders in Europe to provide off spring of several subspecies now.

Cheers, Sergé Bogaerts

sergé said:

By the way, I am glad if the selling of wild caught Salamandra in the US is over. They were mainly imported from the Ukraïne for the last years as far as I know. There are enough breeders in Europe to provide off spring of several subspecies now.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately wholesalers don't care whether something is captive bred or not. Wild caught Salamandra salamandra salamandra are still on sale here, and I am quite sure they are from eastern Europe, most likely still the Ukraine. I saw one a few months ago in the local pet shop here in Plano, Texas. I won't tell you at what temperature it was being kept.

If I can find a few minutes this evening I can provide the Salamandra citations you are looking for Travis, but I don't think I have the authority to post the actual PDFs here.

Serge,

I was really hoping you would respond to this post. I thought I remembered you posting about S. i. orientalis with photos. Did you help on the description of the species?

Travis

This is an interesting topic. The original description of the 3 variants was in this publication:

Joger, U.; Steinfartz, S.; "Protein electrophoretic data on taxonomic problems in East Mediterranean Salamandra (Urodela:Salamandridae)" Scienta Herpetologica 1995, 33-36.

Scienta Herpetologica is not a peer reviewed publication, yet many people have taken the paper's findings as gospel. I find that a little odd and unscientific in this day and age.

Steinfartz got around to publishing in Molecular Ecology 5 years later, which is a peer-reviewed journal but he cites his 1995 non-peer reviewed paper. That's this reference: Steinfartz, S.; Veith, M.; Tautz, D.; "Mitochondrial sequence analysis of Salamandra taxa suggests old splits of major lineages and postglacial recolonizations of Central Europe from distinct source populations of Salamandra salamandra" Molecular Ecology 2000, 9, 397-410. The Mol Ecol paper is very good, in my opinion.

I'm pretty sure Sergé has a close insight into this.

Well, since Steinfartz nice pieces of work nothing more has been published on S. infraimmaculata, but work is in progress ;-). But progress goes slowly as I would like to compare more museum specimens and do a good genetical study. The actual original description of S. i. orientalis is much older: Wolterstorff about 100 years ago. But as almost none S. infraimmaculata are in captive collections (and if they are...I would be interested to see if they are S. infraimmaculata, it is not of much interest yet for this group.

I have only 1.

Salamandra salamandra fastuosa

I was hoping to get a female for free but it died.