The Herpetological Journal

pp. 148-154

Authors: Francisco Fonseca Aguilar, Fernando Miguel Madeira, Eduardo Crespo & Rui Rebelo

Abstract: The southern distribution limit of the Iberian endemic and threatened golden-striped salamander (Chioglossa lusitanica) is located about 170 km NE of Lisbon, Portugal. In 1943 Anthero Seabra reportedly introduced a few specimens in the Sintra mountains, about 20 km NW of Lisbon, but the exact introduction site is not known. The existence of a reproducing population in Sintra became a recurrent topic among herpetologists and, despite the efforts of several individuals and teams, was not confirmed until now. After a fortuitous finding of one individual, we report here the results of a monitoring program involving photoidentification of adults and juveniles conducted during the autumn and winter of 2015/16 and 2016/17. We found a reproducing population living along a 107 m stretch of a single stream. Phenology and larval sizes were similar to those of other populations. Notable aspects of this population are its small size (estimated at 339 ± 35 individuals) and confinement to a very small area, the low proportion of individuals that were recorded moving along the stream and the very short distances travelled by those individuals, and the large size of several adults, including the longest individual recorded so far.

Key words: amphibia, assisted migration, caudata, historical introduction, isolate