90 J. E. Cooper and A. L. Braswell 



and in the case of animals taken in traps we feel justified in so 

 doing, C. latimanus is not inactive during winter months in eastern 

 North Carolina. Intensive sampling was conducted in the Neuse River 

 basin from late December 1978 through May 1979, and in the Tar- 

 Pamlico basin from January through April 1980, most of it part of a 

 study of the distribution and ecology of the salamander, Necturus 

 lewisi (Brimley) (Braswell and Ashton 1985). This effort yielded 

 considerable winter and spring capture ("activity") data for 409 adult 

 and 279 juvenile C. latimanus, the majority of them caught in 

 traps (Table 1). 



Bouchard (1978:37) remarked on a dearth of ovigerous females 

 in collections of this species, saying, "Of the numerous collections of 

 C. latimanus that have been made, only three specimens are females 

 with eggs (or young)." One of these females was collected in a 

 tributary of the Neuse River in Wake County, North Carolina, on 16 

 April 1977, the other two were collected in Alabama on 22 April 

 1973. Hobbs (1981:119), who examined 2,424 specimens of this species 

 from approximately 400 localities, remarked, "I have no records of 

 ovigerous females or of those carrying young anywhere within its 

 range .... This paucity of such females in collections almost certainly 

 reflects inadequate sampling of burrows in the banks of streams." 

 Most of the smallest juveniles collected in the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico 

 surveys were taken in late April and May. This, combined with the 

 few available dates of capture of ovigerous females, Bouchard's (1978:47) 

 report of a copulating pair found on 2 November 1974 in Alabama, 

 and the fact that nearly 50 percent of the males in the January sample 

 reported in Table 1 were form I, leads us to suggest that in eastern 

 North Carolina (1) mating and egg production occur in winter and 

 perhaps late fall, (2) incubation occurs during winter and early spring, 



Table 1. Summary of winter and spring captures of C. latimanus in 

 the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico river basins, 1978-1980. 



Month 



SI 



SU 



9 



juv 



N 



Jan 



46 



48 



81 



21 



196 



Feb 



15 



20 



39 



46 



120 



Mar 



14 



40 



50 



22 



126 



Apr 



9 



19 



23 



168 



219 



May 



1 



2 



2 



22 



27 



Totals 



85 



129 



195 



279 



688 



