Mole Salamander

Ambystoma talpoideum

Mole Salamander

MOSA

Status

The Mole Salamander is common to locally abundant in the Sandhills and Coastal Plain regions. Tennessee lists this salamander as in need of management and North Carolina and Virginia list it as a species of special concern.

Reasons for Current Status

Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina list this species because of its patchy distribution. More information is needed to assess its true status within these states.

Description

Ambystoma talpoideum is a small (8–12.2 cm), gray to brown salamander with a large head, short, stocky body, and relatively short tail.

Distribution

This salamander is found from the southern half of the South Carolina Coastal Plain across southern Georgia and Alabama, northern Florida, most of Mississippi, most of Louisiana, and eastern Texas. Northward, the range extends up the Mississippi River to extreme southern Illinois. Additionally, disjunct populations exist in eastern Oklahoma, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina (Conant, 1975; Martof and others 1980). These salamanders appear to be most prevalent in the upper Coastal Plain sandhills and the lower coastal plain of Georgia, South Carolina, and northern Florida.

Habitat

This species is one of the more fossorial of the salamanders, spending most of the year under logs or leaves, and in burrows in pine flatwoods and bottomland hardwoods. Mole Salamanders breed in semi-permanent ponds throughout the Coastal Plain. This species breeds in ponds which usually abound in emergent and/or submergent vegetation.

Special Requirements

This species, like most of the ambystomatid salamanders, requires shallow, weedy pineland ponds for reproduction. Sandy or similarly loose-structured soil is required in order to accommodate their fossorial activities.

Breeding Habits

Breeding occurs in the winter, usually December. Females deposit 10–41 eggs in small clumps attached to stems or sticks in shallow ponds. Larvae transform in the summer or fall.

Food Habits

The Mole Salamander is an opportunistic feeder, eating a variety of food items including earthworms and arthropods.

Management Suggestions

Shallow, weedy, pineland ponds should be preserved as breeding sites. Fish should not be introduced into these ponds.

Remarks

Paedomorphy has been reported for this species in Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, and South Carolina (Carr and Goin, 1943; Boyd and Vickers, 1963; Patterson, 1978; Trauth and others 1993).

Additional References

Bishop 1943; Hardy and Raymond 1980; Raymond and Hardy 1991; Semlitsch 1987.