Fire belly newts

Chinese fire belly newt ( Cynops orientalis)

Fire belly newts ( Cynops ) are a genus of Caudata with East Asian distribution and only seven species, of which one end of the last century seems to have died. The partially held as aquarium animals often live pigs endemic to a small area.

Features

Cynops species are smaller than those of the related genera or Pachytriton Paramesotriton in general. Their total length is generally 8 cm for males and 10 cm for females. Only the copies of the sword tail newt and the recently extinct Cynops are or were greater wolterstorffi.

On the back and on the flanks of the newts are dark colored, depending on the type of deep black to black olive or dark brown. The body bottom is bright orange to red with black spots. Stripes and spots in the color of the abdomen can also occur on the flanks, the legs, the head or the tail.

Your skin is - except for Cynops wolterstorffi - rough. The tail is laterally flattened. You usually have 13, in rare cases, 14 Pedigree swirls on.

Dissemination

Cynops species occur only in southeastern China and in Japan, where they live partly as endemics.

System

The genus was first described in 1838 by Johann Jakob von Tschudi. It has seven types:

• Sword tail newt - Cynops ensicauda ( Hallowell, 1861)
• Chinese fire belly newt - Cynops orientalis (David, 1873)
• Japanese Fire Belly Newt - Cynops pyrrhogaster ( Boie, 1826)
• Wolterstorff pig - Cynops wolterstorffi ( Boulenger, 1905) †
• Cynops chenggongensis Kou & Xing, 1983
• Cynops cyanurus Liu, Hu & Yang, 1962
• Cynops orphicus Risch, 1983

Molecular biological studies indicate that the genus is paraphyletic, but they, together with the closely related genera Pachytriton and Paramesotriton a clear monophyletic clade from a total of about 15 species.