Ambystomatidae
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Ambystoma |
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Yellow Spotted Salamander
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Ambystoma |
Ambystomatidae is a family of salamanders belonging to the order Caudata in the class Amphibia.
It traditionally contains one genus, Ambystoma, or Mole Salamanders, containing 31 species.
The genera Dicamptodon and Rhyacotriton were formerly included in this family, but are now usually placed into their own families Dicamptodontidae and Rhyacotritonidae. Recently, a large study of amphibian systematics (Frost et al., Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 297 (2006) has placed Dicamptodon back within Ambystomatidae, based on cladistic analysis. This has been accepted by the Center for North American Herpetology.