Old versus young

[slowfoot]

This is just to satisfy my curiosity, and maybe someone else's, too...

A lot of us keep many generations of newts. I was wondering what, if any, differences you've noticed between older and younger newts of the same species. This could be anything: activity level, behavior, physical appearance.

Here's what I've noticed in my Notophthalmus: the 'broken stripe' on my older newts is very different than the stripe on the young newts. Here's a picture (mom is on the right and daughter is on the left):

All of my newts show this difference. They're all related, so it's probably not genetic. I know the spots change over time. But I suppose it's also possible that the difference has something to do with development in captivity versus the wild. My young newts also have nice long toes, probably because they haven't been bitten off yet

What differences have you noticed?

 

[Jennewt]

Nice photo to illustrate. I noticed the same thing with my old (WC) N. v. dorsalis. Their broken stripes were almost continuous. Also, you can see a lot of "stray" orange dots outside the stripe on the older individuals, but not the younger ones. I don't know if these differences are a sign of age or differences between being raised in captivity versus wild.

 

[Azhael]

I have no experience with these but i would suspect the difference in the dorsal line to be a matter of age, based on what can be seen in other species. Young adults can be sexually mature while retaining inmature colour characteristics. In Cynops pyrrhogaster this can be really stricking, for example.
I can´t say i have seen any significant difference between my older adults and their younger adult offspring, but it´s certainly a very interesting topic.

 

[slowfoot]

Nice photo to illustrate. I noticed the same thing with my old (WC) N. v. dorsalis. Their broken stripes were almost continuous. Also, you can see a lot of "stray" orange dots outside the stripe on the older individuals, but not the younger ones. I don't know if these differences are a sign of age or differences between being raised in captivity versus wild.

I thought the little 'stray' dots might also be a difference, but I've noticed most of my young newts have them. The girl in the picture above just happens to not have them. Here's an eft with some random spots:

And here's a larva showing some spots:

Actually, now that I'm looking at the pictures... almost all of my female newts have them, but none of the boys do. Hmmm...