Puerto Hondo Stream Salamander

The Puerto Hondo stream salamander is a mole salamander endemic to the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in the Mexican state of Michoacan, known only from two sites, Puerto Hondo and Puerto Garnica, each a small mountain stream at 9,000 to 9,400 feet elevation with water around 12.4 degrees Celsius. Larvae and neotenes live in the streams themselves, while terrestrial adults stay near the stream banks and in nearby pine and fir forest, sometimes up to 30 meters away; adults reach at most 86 millimeters snout to vent and are usually uniformly dark or black, though some keep a mottled larval pattern. It is classified as endangered, threatened chiefly by habitat fragmentation from human development and by the drying of its streams, though it can persist in cleared pastures and watering holes, which makes habitat isolation more dangerous to it than forest loss alone.