If they are chengongensis, then judging by the tail spots you might have two females. One of the newts seems too orange for one to be able to tell whether it has dorsolateral spots or not. I my self have difficulty coming to grasp with what a species is. Back in sixth grade I was told If two animals can produce fertile young then they are of the same species. Now I've found out this isn't true and that with amphibians its even more complex, where you can get fertile triploid hybrids desended from three "seperate species" with a trisomy of every chromosome, that always females and when they reproduce sperm serves as merely an activator for cell division meanwhile the male doesn't pass on any of his genes, so the female simply clones her self. It doesn't seem to me that what makes a species in amphibians is very well defined, let alone sub species. If some one could clarify what makes an individual species and subspecies, for amphibians, it would be greatly appreciated.
Right now it seems to me that any description of an animal that differs slightly from another animal's description qualifies it to be a new species. It also seems there is nothing in the original description of chengongensis that differs it from cyanarus, some of you even said in another thread that it wouldn't be difficult to imagine a cyanarus with 10 or 11 dorsolateral spots. What proof did Kou and Xing have that they'd found another species?