Northern crested newt

Description

The Northern crested newt is a rather large, powerful newt with a broad head. The males reach a length of ten to a maximum of 18 cm, the females from eleven to a maximum of 20 cm. The upperparts are grey-black in colour, with indistinct darker spots or patches; the skin appears slightly warty-grained. The flanks are intensely whitish granulated at the transition to the ventral side. The belly is yellow or orange with black spots. This pattern of spots even makes it possible to distinguish the animals individually in field biology studies. During the mating season, males develop a high, strongly serrated skin crest on the back and tail, which is interrupted at the root of the tail (in contrast to the common newt). Males also have a characteristic pearly-silvery band ("milk stripe") on the sides of the tail and a more bulging, black cloaca. The females have only a low caudal fin fringe. Their orange belly colouring continues over the cloaca on the lower edge of the tail. After spending time in the water, the aquatic display, especially the conspicuous skin fringes of the males, is largely regressed in late summer, giving way to a more inconspicuous terrestrial display.

Habitat

Spawning waters are mostly perennial, i.e. permanently water-bearing small ponds and pools in rather loamy, rarely sandy soils, which are exposed to sunlight for at least several hours a day. They often have both an open water zone and a richly weedy reed and submerged vegetation and are eutrophic (but not excessively eutrophic!). As this structure is also preferred by other amphibians, water bodies where the Northern crested newt occurs are often characterised by particularly species-rich amphibian communities (associations of different species).

In the vicinity of the water bodies, suitable terrestrial habitats must be available in good spatial interlocking, for example grassland interspersed with field copses, fens, deciduous forests and fringe biotopes such as riparian strips, hedges and similar. Sometimes very valuable habitat structures develop in abandoned soil mining pits. The animals like to seek shelter under stones and lying deadwood and spend the day resting there.

The text is a translation of an excerpt from Wikipedia (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nördlicher_Kammmolch). On wikipedia the text is available under a „Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike“ licence. Status: 29 June 2021