Readers who can squint their way through a scientific paper can learn more about the Ouachita Streambed Salamander by reading the Zootaxa report, which is available for free online.

“Larval Masquerade: A New Species of Paedomorphic Salamander (Caudata: Plethodontidae: Eurycea) From the Ouachita Mountains of North America” is at ronbonett.weebly.com/ publications.html.

Have a dictionary handy.

Here are few vocabulary words associated with salamanders, used in a sentence:

Biodiversity: the variety of life in the world or in a particular place

Ron Bonett is researching various ways geography matters to amphibian biodiversity.

Ova: eggs

That female salamander looks a bit like a sugar snap pea, with her ova clearly visible through her underbelly.

Larva (plural is larvae, adjective is larval): an immature form of a species.

Hey, how come this salamander larva is packed with ova?

Metamorphosis: bodily changes occurring in two or more stages as an animal transitions from immaturity to a mature stage that can reproduce.

Larval Many-Ribbed Salamanders have gills, but they don’t after metamorphosis.

Paedomorphic: retaining youthful form into reproductive adulthood

Look at the gills and other paedomorphic features on that Ouachita Streambed Salamander.

Plethodontic: without lungs

Respiring through gills and skin, 441 species of salamander are plethodontic.

Xeric: dry

Subfluvicola means “dwells below the stream,” in reference to its existence below the streambed during xeric conditions.

Hyporheic: a water-saturated area beneath the bed of a river or stream where icky little spineless insecty thingies hang out

The Ouachita Streambed Salamander is most likely an apex predator in the hyporheic zone.

Cobble: large gravel

The plethodontic, paedomorphic salamander slid into the hyporheic zone’s cobble crevices whenever xeric conditions parched the forest and dried out Slunger Creek.

ActiveStyle, Pages 30 on 04/28/2014