Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

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Jeff
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Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by Jeff »

After 20+ years of living around the Santa Clara Valley/Santa Cruz Mountains, I seem to have missed one species....

Red-bellied Newts (Taricha rivularis) - native breeding population in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Here are the title and a link...

S. Reilly et al. Discovery of a new, disjunct population of a narrowly distributed salamander (Taricha rivularis) in California... Journal of Herpetology vol. 48:371-379

http://danielportik.com/DP/Publications ... Access.pdf


You never know what will turn up...

Jeff
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El Garia
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Re: Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by El Garia »

Thanks for sharing this, Jeff. Muy interesante; even more so if non-introduced.
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Re: Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by hellihooks »

Wow! Very interesting. :beer: jim
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Re: Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by RobertH »

Yes, Nicholas and I are surprised, too. Who would have thought you can find t. rivularis south of the Bay Area. Very cool.

Thanks for sharing,

Robert
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Fieldnotes
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Re: Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by Fieldnotes »

Very interesting. I haven’t read the article in its entirety, but I suspect introduced. Taricha rivularis is a very common species in the north, it is even common where it competes with Taricha torosa and T. granulosa. Much breeding habitat (oxygenated flowing water) exists in Stevenson drainage, yet it has only been found at a relatively small portion. My thoughts are, the population is either dying out or recently established. If native, why would it be dying out? And if introduced, well then it is just a matter of time till it spreads throughout the drainage and then migrates beyond. What are your thoughts...?

Image
Image of Taricha rivularis from Sonoma County
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Brian Hubbs
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Re: Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by Brian Hubbs »

My thoughts are that it is a species I have never seen, so I need to see one next year...bwahahaha, or as FR would say..Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
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El Garia
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Re: Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by El Garia »

There's too many long-standing natural barriers between the South Bay population, and the northern population.

Though I'd love to believe the population is relict, I think it's a case of introduction by humans.
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Jeff
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Re: Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by Jeff »

Stevens Creek was not a place that I frequented (maybe twice), though I had some friends that spent time up there during the 1970s. In those days Stevens Creek was too far to bother by bike, so my associates (including Owen and El Garia) operated the three watersheds to the southeast. We spent a lot of time in the adjacent watershed, which also had a lot of redwoods, and we surveyed plenty in the Dicamptodon zone (the other two watersheds lacked redwoods). We also spent hundreds of accumulated hours in many other streams in the Santa Cruz Mountains, including the sorts of streams in which I have observed rivularis in Mendocino and Lake counties.

I agree with Fieldnotes and El Garia that the locating of these things leads to some skepticism. The site is fairly remote, and why would someone attempt an introduction? It would likely have taken many breeding pairs (hundreds?) to establish a population. And, why aren't they in the other watersheds that are just over the hill? Why haven't they been found crossing the upper end of the road along with the other two Taricha?

Unfortunately, the genome used by the authors to analyze haplotype relationships seemed pretty useless because almost the entire tree is unresolved. So, at this point, molecular relationships remain unknown.

A re-survey of this site in a few years may give some insight about whether or not it is a stable, native isolate, or a temporary, ill-suited introduction.

Jeff
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Fieldnotes
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Re: Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by Fieldnotes »

Nice points.
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Re: Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by hellihooks »

The data for the paper was collected 4 years ago... survey NOW?? lol be nice if Nafha could track spread/decline of this population... Who Better??? 8-)
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Gary N
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Re: Red-bellies in the South Bay area!

Post by Gary N »

Thanks for the article link, Jeff. I hadn't been able to read it yet.

The newts were first reported to me by Cindy Roessler in December 2009 who told me they were originally found in May 2008. Fortunately, somebody with the Open Space Preserve recognized that they were the wrong newts for that location. But that doesn't tell us how much longer they might have been there.

The authors advocate protecting the population even though it is might be introduced (and therefore not worth protecting) because "this newly discovered population might be a critical assurance colony that will aid in the long-term persistence of this declining species." (I wonder if they are advocating the need for critical assurance colonies of other even more endangered species?) This seems to indicate that they want to continue to study the populations decline or spread, so maybe they'll do some better work on the molecular relationships.

Speaking of critical assurance colonies;
I was recently asked to identify a Large-blotched Ensatina a pyro hunter found in Arizona. When I asked around, I found that it was already known that some Ensatina were intentionally released there in 1980 by a guy who wanted to save the subspecies. That would be a great population of salamanders to study if someone knew the number of salamanders that were released and estimated how many there are now and how far they have spread. Anybody know if someone from AZ is doing that?
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