Superregnum: Eukaryota
Regnum: Animalia
Subregnum: Eumetazoa
Cladus: Bilateria
Cladus: Nephrozoa
Superphylum: Deuterostomia
Phylum: Chordata
Cladus: Craniata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Infraphylum: Gnathostomata
Superclassis: Tetrapoda
Classis: Amphibia
Subclassis: Lissamphibia
Ordo: Urodela
Subordo: Salamandroidea
Familia: Ambystomatidae
Genera: Ambystoma - Dicamptodon
Name
Ambystomatidae Gray, 1850: Cat. Spec. Amph. Coll. Brit. Mus., Batr. Grad.: 32.
Type genus: Ambystoma Tschudi, 1838
Links
Amphibian Species of the World 5.2 Ambystomatidae access date 26 July 2008
Vernacular names
беларуская: Амбістомавыя
English: Mole Salamanders
日本語: トラフサンショウウオ科
ไทย: วงศ์แอกโซลอเติล
Ambystomatidae is a family of salamanders belonging to the order Caudata in the class Amphibia. It contains only one genus, Ambystoma, the mole salamanders. These salamanders are mostly terrestrial and eat invertebrates, although some species are known to eat smaller salamanders. They can be found throughout the US and some areas of Canada in damp forests or plains. This family contains some of the largest terrestrial salamanders in the world, the tiger salamander and the Pacific giant salamander. Some species are toxic and can secrete poison from their bodies as protection against predators or infraspecific competition. Neoteny has been observed in several species in Ambystomatidae, and some of them like the Axolotl live all of their lives under water in their larval stage.
Taxonomy
The genus Rhyacotriton was formerly included in this family, but is now usually placed into its own family Rhyacotritonidae. In 2006, a large study of amphibian systematics (Frost et al., Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 297 (2006) placed Dicamptodon back within Ambystomatidae, based on cladistic analysis. This has been accepted by the Center for Indian Herpetology.
References
http://amphibiaweb.org/lists/Ambystomatidae.shtml
http://tolweb.org/Ambystomatidae/15448
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/"
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
