Silver-white Variants of the Eastern Red-backed Salamander, Plethodon cinereus, from Eastern Canada

Authors

  • Martin Ouellet
  • Jean-David Moore

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22621/cfn.v130i2.1835

Keywords:

Coloration, colour morph, dorsal stripe, silver-white variant, red-backed morph, Eastern Red-backed Salamander, Plethodon cinereus, Québec, Canada

Abstract

The Eastern Red-backed Salamander (Plethodon cinereus) is well known for its colour polymorphism, which includes 8 colour phenotypes: the red-backed (striped), lead-backed (unstriped), and erythristic morphs, as well as the iridistic, albino, leucistic, amelanistic, and melanistic anomalies. Among these, the prevalence and geographic distribution of rare morphs have received little attention. In this article, we report 2 occurrences of silver-white variants of the red-backed morph of P. cinereus from Québec, Canada. To our knowledge, these variations in stripe colour on the red-backed phenotype represent the first 2 documented mentions for eastern Canada.

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Published

2016-04-01

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Notes