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- Title
A temporal color variant in the Blunt-headed Salamander (Ambystoma amblycephalum) in west-central Mexico.
- Authors
DE JESÚS FRAUSTROS-SANDOVAL, ARMANDO; DÁVALOS-MARTÍNEZ, ALDO; CAROLINA ROSAS-ESPINOZA, VERÓNICA; ALFREDO CORTÉS-ARÉVALO, SAULO; NAVARRETE HEREDIA, JOSÉ LUIS; LUISA SANTIAGO-PÉREZ, ANA
- Abstract
Coloration in amphibians plays an essential role in their ecology and has implications for adaptation, reproduction, speciation, crypsis, and thermoregulation. Color is produced by chromatophores and their pigments. Color anomalies result from mutations or exogenous factors that impact the distribution, abundance, or synthesis of the pigments within the chromatophores. While doing a population dynamics study of Ambystoma amblycephalum in 6 ponds at the municipality of Tapalpa, Jalisco, in west-central Mexico, we registered 7 neotenic individuals with abnormal coloration. We captured and observed one of these individuals for more than 7 months. In this area, the regular coloration of neotenic organisms is dark yellow with irregular dark brown spots all over the body. The reported individual had a gradual change in its coloration, from almost all yellow with dark spots to almost all dark gray, in an elapsed time of 220 days. This individual presented piebaldism, a coloration anomaly that is possibly epigenetically controlled.
- Subjects
MEXICO; JALISCO (Mexico); SALAMANDERS; POPULATION dynamics; CHROMATOPHORES; COLOR; AMPHIBIANS
- Publication
Western North American Naturalist, 2024, Vol 84, Issue 1, p158
- ISSN
1527-0904
- Publication type
Article