Amphibians
Red Hills Salamander
Phaeognathus hubrichti · also called Alabama state amphibian
The Red Hills salamander is a large amphibian that lives its entire life in a hole in the ground, on a few forested hillsides in one small corner of Alabama, and it was not known to science until 1960. Alabama liked it enough to make it the state amphibian.
Overview
Phaeognathus hubrichti is the only species in its genus, a lungless salamander confined to the Red Hills of south-central Alabama, a strip of hardwood forest barely 100 km long. At 20 to 25 cm it is one of the largest fully terrestrial lungless salamanders.
A life underground, and dry
It digs a permanent burrow up to a metre long in the moist soil of steep, shaded ravine slopes, and hunts invertebrates at the entrance at night. It has no aquatic stage at all — the eggs hatch directly into tiny salamanders deep in the burrow, so the animal can live and die without ever entering water.
Status
Endangered, federally protected, and declining as its ravine hardwood forest is clear-cut and replaced with pine plantation, which dries the slopes and collapses the burrows. It cannot cross unsuitable ground, so a logged ravine is lost to it.
Red Hills Salamander: common questions
Why does the Red Hills salamander live in a burrow?
The burrow is its entire strategy for surviving on land as a lungless animal. Lungless salamanders breathe through their skin and the lining of the mouth, which only works when those surfaces stay moist, so most of them are tied to streams, seeps, or wet forest floor. The Red Hills salamander instead keeps itself in a stable, humid microclimate by living permanently underground in the cool, damp soil of shaded ravine slopes, coming to the mouth of the burrow at night to snatch passing prey and withdrawing before the air dries out. This lets it occupy hillsides that would otherwise be too dry for a skin-breathing salamander.
How was such a big salamander only discovered in 1960?
Because it almost never comes out. The Red Hills salamander spends its life in a burrow in a small, rural, forested part of Alabama that had little scientific attention, and it does not migrate to breed, chorus, or gather in the open the way pond-breeding amphibians do. A person could walk over a hillside full of them and see nothing but small holes in the bank. It took a naturalist deliberately excavating ravine slopes to turn one up, and it was recognised at once as something entirely new, distinct enough to need its own genus.
What threatens the species?
The loss of its very specific habitat. The Red Hills salamander needs mature hardwood forest on steep, shaded slopes with deep, moist, silty soil, and it occurs only where a particular rock formation produces that soil, along a strip of Alabama barely 100 kilometres long. Much of that forest has been clear-cut and replanted with dense rows of pine, which lets sunlight and wind dry the slopes, hardens and erodes the soil, and causes the burrows to collapse. Because the animal cannot disperse across unsuitable ground, a logged ravine is effectively lost to it, and the remaining populations are small and isolated.
Can you keep or see a Red Hills salamander?
It is federally protected, so collecting one is illegal, and it would be an extremely poor captive animal in any case, since it needs undisturbed deep soil and does badly if removed from its burrow. Seeing one in the wild is difficult even for biologists; surveys are usually done by counting burrow entrances or by patient night observation at the openings. The best way to support the species is to back the protection and restoration of Red Hills hardwood forest, some of which is now held in conservation ownership and managed for the salamander.