Northernmost Locality Record of the Near Eastern Fire Salamander, Salamandra infraimmaculata (Martens, 1885) (Amphibia: Salamandridae) in Türkiye

Abstract

We provided a new locality record of Salamandra infraimmaculata, which is distributed in Türkiye, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Israel. Five juvenile individuals belonging to the species were recorded from Yoncabayırı village located in the İmranlı district of Sivas province, Türkiye. This is the evidence for the northernmost locality of S. infraimmaculata. The new locality record shows that the distribution of the species may extend along the branches of the Kızılırmak River and Tozanlı and Kelkit streams. Future field observations to be performed in the northern districts of Sivas and neighboring provinces to the north may extend the distribution of the species in Türkiye. Morphometric measurements and color-pattern characteristics of the specimens of the species from the new locality were described according to the subspecies distinction. SVL ranged between 63.14 and 78.43 mm in the juveniles of S. infraimmaculata. The color-pattern characteristics of the specimens from the Yoncabayırı population were found similar to the color-pattern features reported in other studies for S. i. orientalis subspecies. The specimens caught in Yoncabayarı had the presence of small yellow spots on the dorsal, which corresponds to the general characteristic of the subspecies