Clawed salamanders of Asia genus Onychodactylus - Biology, distribution and conserva-tion

Hohenwarsleben 1995, kt., 108 Seiten, Abb. Clawed salamanders of the genus Onychodactylus are among the most interesting amphibians, not just by having claws. Unlike most other amphibians, they do not have lungs but breathe through their skin, a feature especially shared with species of the amphibian family Plethodontidae. Clawed salamanders are representatives of an-other family, Hynobiidae, which is considered to have the most primitive characteristics among all the recent, tailed amphibians. However, both evolutionary derived features and characteris-tics even more primitive than in other hynobiids are combined in their morphology. The geo-graphical distribution of the clawed salamanders is limited to a few mountain systems in the continental Far East and Japan.