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| Red-bellied newts spend most of their lives underground and we know little about what they do there. |
The genetic results for the unusual population of red-bellied newts were in. Two newts from the newly discovered population in Santa Clara County were compared to forty newts from the main range in Sonoma, Mendocino, and Humboldt Counties. The populations were genetically indistinguishable from each other.
They were all the same. We were stunned.
This meant we could not determine if the previously unknown Stevens Creek newts were a naturally disjunct population or were introduced by humans from the northern range. These were surprising results for a salamander species.
