Hello dear friends,
First of all, I wish to thank those of you that have mailed me with their best wishes for the next millenium. I hope that all of you are well and that you might have a good New Year as well. As it is always the case that the end of the year is one the busiest periods in my professional life, and this year it got much worse than other years. I have been working till past midnightvsome days trying to make an unrealistic deadline for a problem that had to be solved by 01/01/2001... so most of the emails that I have received have stayed unanswered. As a consequence, I have possibly further reserved my place among the impolite people that don't answer Christmas cards ... Sorry.
SOME PERSONAL NOTES FIRST
The personal PC that I got on a loan basis from my company showed some troubles and has been returned ( I will get a new one). I have backups of the files on disk, but then someone on the train stole my case ( he must have thought the PC was still in it...) and so even the few backups I had are gone... Anyway I'm still alive and have some vacation in front of me now to recuperate ...
Video observations on salamander behavior :
I received a very interesting reply from Rainer Schulte (thanks Rainer) concerning the possibility of registering video images on Bolitoglossa on PC. It is not expensive and looks promising. I hope to send a summary or a copy of Rainers answer.
=========
AXOLOTL BOOK :
Finally, the book on Axolotls by J. Wistuba has been released with Natur & Tier verlag ( ISBN 3-931587-35-5). It is about 80 pages long and has over 60 color pictures in it. I was happy to see that the editors had chosen about 37 of my pictures for this book from eggs to adults (metamorphosed , race colorations, and even - unfortunately - some diseases).
---------------------------
TYLOTOTRITON TALIANGENSIS :
Well the 5 animals do quite well and have eaten a lot lately. Currently I see that some of their backs are starting to look wet. This comes close to when Triturus start developing their crests, so I think they might be getting ready to go into the water and .. eventually reproduce. I checked out a breeding report of J. Fleck (1997) telling that he initially kept his animals at 15°-20°C, but that the first reproductive activities started at 10-15°C in May. This coincides with the observations at their natural site by Kabish & Herrman ( 1994). So the season is not right , but temperatures are... I'm curious to see what this will become (T. verrucosus probably doesn't breed during winter under natural conditions either). They are still juveniles , so maybe they will not yet want to breed. Anyway, for those that don't have access to Fleck's report or that do not understand German : Jurgen Fleck did effectively breed then from June on at temperatures from 24°C to 27°C. The females deposited up to 200 eggs each. His group had 10 males and 2 females. The reproduction is similar to Pleurodeles, and males develop the same clasping brush on the forearms.
--------------------
TYLOTOTRITON VERRUCOSUS :
Since I got 11 larvae from Frank, my animals must have thought that I doubted their sexual capacities and just haven't stopped reproducing : for well over a month, the females have been setting off eggs in the java moss. My tank just has java moss and stones. They laid the eggs in the middle of the java moss (the females crawl into it). The tank has about 10-12 cm of water, the java moss comes from the bottom to the surface of the entire tank (so almost no place to swim). The temperature is somewhat higher then 22°C I think (I should measure). They have in the meantime already layed about 3 times and are still lying fertilized eggs. Yesterday evening I recovered 19 eggs. Both planaria and the males eat the eggs if I don't take them out. Unfortunately, the first batch of 40 larvae all died due to a water refereshment with tap water ( my error), so I now only use water from an outdoor in a pool, which I let warm up first. I still have 11 large larvae ( from 4 to 2.5 cm) and about 25 new ones (with about 40 more fertilized eggs in the process of development). These animals just don't want to stop reproducing... The eggs are also deposited on stones out of the water (at the shore line of the water though). Which makes me think that even in nature some eggs must be deposited out of the water in the moist part of mosses. (Echinotriton andersoni and chinaiensis also lay their eggs like this among leaflitter). I have no exact measurements on the pH of my water, but with the debris and moss, it should be more on the acid side ( I have not measurement equipment .. yet). On the tank I have laid a TL lamp that burns 24 hours (yes, no dark period). I turn it of some days (2 or 3) and then turn it on again... and this works well. So these are quite rudimentary setups for a species that doesn't pose troubles at all. The ease of keeping and breeding these make them look like quite a good candidate for lab research. The main clue seems to be the temperature and .. enough food, since they come close to being little vacuum cleaners, even finding death prey (mainly) through the night (observation by J. Clare, UK). It sure is nice to have some animals breeding though the winter ...
---------------------------
TYLOTOTRITON SHANJING :
The raising of the 2 different genetic offspring groups still goes well. Since yesterday, the last larvae of the Pasmans group went ashore. All 9 animals are still alive, although I again found one juvenile looking like death. I treated it like I had mentioned in my former SALAMANDER PLAYDEAD mail and it miraculously recovered. I would have sworn it was dead. So again if you keep salamanders that are laying dead but not stiff or smelling ... be aware you should not dispose of it just yet: it might still be alive. This is my 5th animal that I have succeeded saving this way. I should probably try to publish this observation somewhere since I have meanwhile been informed of other occurrences of this behavior in Holland. For those interested, I can send this observation over separately. For the Bouwman group (3 animals): one of them is starting to get quite thin and I think that I will need to get into action. This animal had already shown a problem with its tail (changing skin troubles): it had an open wound, but cleaning this wound with water and getting of the skin with my hands helped, and the tail has healed well. But now it looks as it if it doesn't want to eat anymore (I offer bloodworms, fly maggots, and buffalo worms). I hope that I do not loose it, since the other 2 are looking very colorful. In fact they are already miniature sized Mandarin newts.
---------------------------
HYNOBIUS :
All my Hynobius species are now installed in the isolated garden house. Water temperatures are about 3°C now, it is still unheated. I have installed the H. dunni offspring of 1999 in a separate tank so that when they breed I can be sure that they do reproduce at age 2 (like I strongly think). The length of these younger ones is now equal to the adults. Also my 3 H. nebulosus, which had remained indoors for the last 1.5 years, have also been set in a separate tank. All the pond type Hynobius tanks have received the necessary dead branches in them so that the females have places to deposite their egg sacs. The H. okiensis females are building up eggs and I sure hope they will breed again and that this year I might raise some of the eggs of this extremely rare species. I will keep you updated on the further evolution of my Hynobius breedings , which will be one of my priorities in 2001.
---------------------------
CAECILIANS :
All are doing fine and growing. It looks like I again have a pregnant Typhlonectes compressicauda female, so I should start to think about finding other keepers or building an extra tank. I started out with 5 and now have 15 of them swimming and digging around in their tank. As the stud book keeper of this species, I only have knowledge of 3 other people keeping them currently... and knowing that they can no longer be imported this is a (very) narrow group. I also have some interesting observation records which were given my by H. Janssens ( Brugge , Belgium), who has kept this species for more then 15 years already. But this will have to wait until I have my new portable PC ready.
---------------------------
URODELA WORKGROUP HOLLAND
The Urodela workgroup Holland has existed 20 years (!!) already, and they want to celebrate this with the edition of a book on captive care of newts. I have been asked to write some articles on the care of some of the rare species that I keep, and I have fully agreed to do so. The booklet will be issued in Dutch (sorry ...) and will also contain (some) color pictures, mostly depending on the cost (since the workgroup is not a bunch of millionaires working together..). The deadline for entering articles is May 2001. I will keep you posted on the development of this matter.
NEURERGUS & PACHYHYNOBIUS :
No further interesting observations do discuss.