Abstract
The growths in nature of male and female individually recognized salamanders Salamandra infraimmaculata were recorded for 21 years and 19 years, respectively. In most salamanders, increases in mass and length took place during the first 9–10 years of life. The increase in mass with age was more pronounced than that in either total body length (TL) or snout-vent length (SVL). TL proved to be sometimes unreliable as a measure to assess growth, because the tail tip was occasionally shriveled off by gangrene infection that sets in following young jackals’ bites. Also, SVL might not be accurately measured because of the natural distortion and bending of the spine in older salamanders, and mass was highly variable due to fluctuation in amount of prey consumed and, in females, to varying state of parturition: a litter weighed up to 30 g (corresponding to 100 neonates: 0.2–0.3 g each) and, moreover, a female did not always release her entire litter at once. As such, it is advisable to examine all of the three dimensions with hope that at least one of them may give a reliable measure for estimation of the growth in this species.
