Salamanders of the Old World

Online catalogue 

The goal of the catalogue is to establish a ‘home page’ for every Old World salamander species. Species accounts will be added regularly, containing species descriptions, life history information, range maps, photographs and literature references. The catalogue will therefore be under construction for some time. When the catalogue is completed, publication in book form will be considered. Salamanders of the Old World has been created at Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis in Leiden, the Netherlands, which hosts this website. This online catalogue was inspired by and shares data with the following sources:

AmphibiaWeb
A website that provides information on amphibian conservation, distribution, population declines, as well as other information about and images of many amphibian species. The website is an initiative of the University of California, Berkeley, USA. 

Amphibians on the IUCN Red List 
This part of the IUCN website presents a comprehensive assessment of the conservation status of the world’s known species of amphibians. The first assessment was completed as the Global Amphibian Assessment (GAA) in 2004; it was updated in 2006 and 2008.
http://www.iucnredlist.org/  is the website of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

Salamanders of China
This is a lifedesk focusing on all Chinese salamander species. http://salamandersofchina.lifedesks.org. It is maintained by Yunke Wu, Harvard University, USA with species entries written by Max Sparreboom and Yunke Wu.

Tree of Life - Living Amphibians 
The website of The Tree of Life (ToL) Project provides a basic source of information regarding the evolutionary history of all organisms on Earth, including the major amphibian taxa. The salamander chapters are authored by Allan Larson, David Wake & Tom Devitt, 2006. The ToL Project is hosted by The University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and The University of Arizona Library. 

Amphibian Species of the World 
Amphibian Species of the World is a fully searchable online reference of amphibian taxonomy referred to as Frost, Darrel R. 2011. Amphibian Species of the World: an Online Reference Version 5.5 (31 January 2011). American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA.

The Salamanders of the Old World online catalogue uses Amphibian Species of the World as its default taxonomy, and only departs from this on well-justified grounds. 

Presentation of the data

The structure of the species entries follows that of the canonical text book by Robert Thorn, 1969: Les salamandres d’Europe, d’Asie et d’Afrique du Nord: Genus and species descriptions, diagnosis, larvae, distribution, habitat, behaviour, threats, conservation and literature. A paragraph with reference to published reports of captive maintenance and breeding is added to the species entries, where this is relevant to our knowledge of a species’ behaviour. For care-sheets of species kept in captivity and details on captive breeding, see http://www.caudata.org/ and http://www.ag-urodela.de.
These sites provide links to other sites on captive maintenance of newts and salamanders.

 
Ommatotriton vittatus Syria 
© 2009 Max Sparreboom