Paramesotriton variations

[TJ]

Saw some interesting Paramesotritons the other day, including an intriguing green one, an extremely warty black one and two with red dorsal ridgelines. To start with, the green one:

 

[TJ]

The warty black one:

 

[TJ]

The red-ridged ones:

(bad pics of nice newts....the overexposure has corrupted the color so that the lines don't seem as red as they are in reality)

 

[pin-pin]

I like way the green guy looks right at you, fearless little bugger.

 

[mark]

I'm guessing but i think the black warty one is P.chinensis

 

[alan]

The green guy is what I have been told is fungzhongensis. By that logic, the black warty one is indeed chinensis. In the tank of ~50 newts I picked my fungzhongensis from (all wc), there were several with various degrees of red-ridged appearance. Mixed species? Hybrids? Who knows?

 

[nate]

Those are all chinensis. The yellow warts on their sides, the yellow spots on their limbs (particularly at the base), and the unmistakable belly patterns are pretty conclusive to me. Green chinensis have shown up quite a bit in the past, and there are photos of some that Heather Bjornebo was keeping at

http://www.caudata.org/cc/images/species/Paramesotriton/P_chinensis1BJORNEBO.jpg

http://www.caudata.org/cc/images/species/Paramesotriton/P_chinensis5BJORNEBO.jpg

Overall, I've seen green, brown, grey, tan, and now black chinensis

 

[TJ]

Thanks for those links, Nate. Yep, very similar in appearance. The green one had been in the shop for a while and was in better shape than the rest. It was very alert, perhaps hoping for food. Here's a clearer shot of its body: