page_title: Mole salamander
section_title: Taxonomy
hierarchical_section_title: Mole salamander / Taxonomy
caption_attribution_description: English: Adopted from Jones et al. (1993, Systematic Biology, 42(1): 92–102) tree showing relationships for Ambystomatidae. This was modified from the original version in my thesis.
context_page_description: The mole salamanders are a group of advanced salamanders endemic to North America. The group has become famous due to the presence of the axolotl, widely used in research due to its paedomorphosis, and the tiger salamander which is the official amphibian of many states, and often sold as a pet.
context_section_description: Rhyacosiredon was previously considered a separate genus within the family Ambystomatidae. However, cladistic analysis of the mole salamanders found the existence of Rhyacosiredon makes Ambystoma paraphyletic, since the species are more closely related to some Ambystoma species than those species are to others in Ambystoma. The stream-type morphology of these salamanders (which includes larvae and neotenes with short gills and thicker gular folds) may have led to their misclassification as a different genus.
  The genus name Ambystoma was given by Johann Jakob von Tschudi in 1839, and is traditionally translated as "cup-mouth",.  Tschudi did not provide a derivation for the name, and many thought that he intended the name Amblystoma, "blunt-mouth."  Occasionally, old specimens and documents use the name Amblystoma.  Writing in 1907, Leonhard Stejneger offered a derivation of Ambystoma based on the contraction of a Greek phrase meaning "to cram into the mouth," but others have not found this explanation convincing.  In the absence of clear evidence that Tschudi committed a lapsus, the name given in 1839 stands.
caption: Phylogenetic tree showing relations among Ambystoma species and outgroups: For example, the sister taxon to Ambystoma macrodactylum is Ambystoma laterale, meaning they share a single common ancestor and are each other's closest living relatives.
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