Tylototriton, Anderson, 1871

Wang, Kai, Yuan, Zhiyong, Zhong, Guanghui, Li, Guangyu & Verrell, Paul A., 2017, Reproductive biology of Tylototriton yangi (Urodela: Salamandridae), with suggestions on its conservation, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation (e 145) 11 (2), pp. 33-43 : 39

Importance of chemical communication in courtship of Tylototriton

In newts and salamanders, olfactory signals are involved in intersexual recognition both within and among species ( Dawley 1984, 1986). The extensive snout nudging and rubbing behavior patterns that we observed in male T. yangi suggests that they may obtain olfactory information from females during courtship: nudging may be sniffing. It may be that glands on the heads and in the warts of these newts show sexual dimorphism in glandular products, enabling discrimination between the sexes. On the other hand, Li et al. (2012) suggested that T. shanjing did not show any sniffing or nudging behavior and seemed to rely on visual cues at the beginning stage of courtship. Given these apparent differences in cues used in recognition processes among Tylototriton species and examples of behavioral isolation through chemical recognition in desmognathine salamanders ( Tilley et al. 1990; Verrell and Mabry 2000; Mabry and Verrell 2004), it is possi- ble that behavioral isolation also is present among species in the genus Tylototriton . Further work is needed to determine whether these behavioral differences, occurring before spermatophore deposition and at a time when species recognition might be expected to occur, result in decreased successes of heterospecific encounters ( Verrell and Mabry 2003). Continued work on systematics and reproductive biology will surely reveal more about pattern and process in the evolutionary history of the genus Tylototriton generally, and the T. verrucosus group specifically.