Lissotriton Helveticus

[Stupot1610]

Whilst on holiday in the Cairngorms Natinal Park in the springtime I noticed that every small ditch, puddle, bog or pond had at least 20 palmate newts per square metre. After returning for another holiday later in the year I noticed that the ditches and puddles were completely dry and the bogs were taken over by moss with little open water. Only the ponds remailed relatively unchanged apart from plant growth. I thought this was quite interesting. You can always find lots of juveniles under logs and rocks, I'm assuming this means that they grow quite quickly in the smaller pools or the small pools dry up and only the ones in the bogs and ponds survive. I also noticed many common frogs spawning in ditches, the daft things completely ignored the ponds and spawned in the ditches and puddles. It's interesting how the temporary water bodies are preferable to permanent ones. The only reasons for this I can think of are existing predatory species in the ponds, but surely the ponds would have more food for them? Any comments are appreciated, please feel free to enlighten me on this topic I will add photos of a pair of palmate newts I collected for observarion.

Stuart

 

[Azhael]

This is fairly common, specially for common frogs. As you suspected, by laying their eggs in temporary puddles with very little or no vegetation (superior plants) they avoid first and foremost, fish, but also dragonfly and damselfly, predatory beetles like Ditiscus, etc. Also, they largely avoid competition, either for algae in the case of tadpoles, or tiny invertebrates in the case of newt larvae, both of which can flourish fast even in small, highly temporary puddles.
For the L.helveticus i'd say it's a bit more uncommon and it may be a matter of strategy based on what is available to them in that area. Usually it is a species that will happily inhabit permanent bodies of water and will even overwinter in them. However, since their metamorphs can be extremely tiny, i can see how they could easily take advantage of temporary puddles with their rapid and minimal development before metamorphosis.

 

[Stupot1610]

Thanks for clearing that up, it's really interesting. Here are the photos, nothing spectacular

 

[Azhael]

Oh, i disagree i love palmates!

 

[caleb]

I love palmates too, one of my favourites.

Here in NE England they often turn up in very small ponds, even tyre ruts. I've attached a photo of a rut that had several pairs courting in it. I've seen well grown larvae in ruts like this, so I guess they could make it to metamorphosis in a wet year.

Another factor that might influence this is temperature- shallow water will warm up more quickly. This is important for natterjack toad tadpoles (in the UK, at least)- their strategy is to develop quickly in warm shallow ponds.

 

[Stupot1610]

Oh, i disagree i love palmates!

I love the Lissotriton genus too, when I said nothing spectacular I was talking about my photos, not the newts.

Stuart

 

[Stupot1610]

I love palmates too, one of my favourites.

Here in NE England they often turn up in very small ponds, even tyre ruts. I've attached a photo of a rut that had several pairs courting in it. I've seen well grown larvae in ruts like this, so I guess they could make it to metamorphosis in a wet year.

Another factor that might influence this is temperature- shallow water will warm up more quickly. This is important for natterjack toad tadpoles (in the UK, at least)- their strategy is to develop quickly in warm shallow ponds.

That's exactly how they were up in the Caingorms, I was amazed. I had heard of that with natterjack roads too, it's really quite fascinating.

Stuart

 

[otolith]

Love these, great photos! Lissotriton are so un-represented here, very happy to see them get some attention

I hope to keep these guys someday, absolutely beautiful little newts.

 

[jAfFa CaKe]

Where I live I don't think there is an established population of them . They are beautiful newts, but the females are very hard to tell apart from L. vulgaris.

 

[xxianxx]

I have seen plenty of newts in flooded tyre ruts in the welsh valleys when out birdwatching. In fact I've seen more newts than the shrikes I was trying to spot