Peculiarities of Variation of the Spotted Newt Triturus vulgaris lantzi Wolt., Crested Newt T. Cristatus karelini Str., and the Banded Newt T. vittatus ophryticus Bert. in the Western Caucasus

Abstract

Caucasian forms of the spotted newt (Triturus vulgaris lantzi Wolterstorff 1914) crested newt (Triturus cristatus karelini Strauch 1870) and the banded newt (Triturus vittatus ophryticus Berthold 1846) are spread on both slopes of the Western Caucasus. Only the last-named is the most common and widely-distributed species which, however, does not spread the alpine belts. The other two species occur sporadically, T. vulgaris lantzi inhabiting nearly all the mountain ecological belts from the Black Sea coast in the south, the River Kuban’ in the north, and up to the subalpine meadows of the Main Caucasus Range (Tuniyev, 1983). The biotopes of T. cristatus karelini, disappearing from the region, gravitate towards the foothills of both slopes of the Western Caucasus no higher than 1000 m. There are only fragmentary data on variation of T. vulgaris lantzi (Bartenev and Reznikova, 1935), whereas the population variation of T. vittatus and T. cristatus remains completely unknown. In view of the biogeographic interest in the study of fauna genesis of the caudate amphibians in the Western Caucasus we tried to fill this gap.