Taricha vomerine teeth

[ester]

Unfortunately I had one casualty. Not the extremely thin one I showed a picture of a few weeks ago (he's eating well) but the 2nd thinnest one. Over the past few days I could tell I was losing that fight. The skin started to show the tell tale melting signs. It died last night.

It has given me a chance to take a close up picture of the vomerine teeth.

Can someone tell me if this is V of Y shaped? In other words, was this individual a granulosa or a torosa?

 

[jennifer]

Sorry about your newt, but thanks for taking the photo. I would describe that as a more of a V (no stem), which would suggest granulosa, but I certainly have not seen any torosa teeth to compare it with. Where's Pin-pin?

 

[pin-pin]

First off, that is an absolutely beautiful shot, Ester. I'm sorry to hear your animal died, I'm sure it got the best care with you.

As for the volmerine teeth, I am still on the fence about the validity of its use in taxonomy without egg and location. The "Y-shape" on T. torosa (and T. rivularis) is not fused, so it's difficult to use it as the sole identifying trait. In Copeia, 1963, issue # 3 ("Variations in the prevolmerine tooth patterns in the Salamander genus Taricha"), there was a study where they measured the angle of the bend in each row of teeth.

On page 564 of that article, there is a sketch of the angles for each subspecies. The angle in your photo seems to be more T. granulosa.

I am not sure if I needed copyrights to post the sketch on this forum, but it's easy enough to find.