Necturus lewisi Study: Introduction 5 



230 were from the Neuse and Tar drainages. Fedak's study showed that 

 sexual maturity in male N. lewisi occurred at 102 mm SVL, and the first 

 yolked oocytes and thickened and coiled oviducts were found in females 

 at 100 mm SVL. Age at sexual maturity was given as 5.5 to 6.5 years. 

 Male testes were swollen in early fall, and the dark, involuted vasa 

 deferentia were packed with sperm from November through May. The 

 cloacal glands were swollen during this period, but swelling progres- 

 sively decreased from late March through May. Sperm were present in 

 female spermathecae from December through May, the same period in 

 which the male cloacal glands were most swollen and the vasa deferentia 

 loaded with sperm. The largest yolked eggs were found in April and 

 May, and the smallest in May and July. From these findings Fedak 

 concluded that N. lewisi (and, from other data, TV. punctatus) mate in 

 winter, and that egg deposition probably occurs in May or early June. 



Fedak (1971:97) also commented on relationships, expressing the 

 opinion that "Necturus lewisi is probably most closely related to upland 

 populations oi N. maculosus in the Tennessee River." He further hypoth- 

 esized that N. lewisi, N maculosus, and N. alabamensis were closely 

 related, and that N. punctatus was most similar to N. beyeri Viosca. 



Stephan (1977) provided a general description of N. lewisi, sum- 

 marized what was known of its distribution and natural history, then 

 suggested a conservation status of Special Concern. He also noted (p. 

 318) that, "The Neuse River Waterdog was considered a species of Spe- 

 cial Concern at the Workshop on Threatened and Endangered Verte- 

 brates of the Southeast." 



Ashton and Braswell (1979), as part of the preliminary phase of the 

 overall project, found and described the first reported nest and hatch- 

 ling larvae of N. lewisi. The nest, discovered on 2 July 1978, was under 

 a flat rock in 1.2 m of water in the middle of the Little River, northeast- 

 ern Wake County, about 2 m from shore. Thiry-two empty egg cap- 

 sules, and three with larvae that soon emerged, were attached to the 

 underside of the rock. An adult male (147.6 mm SVL) tagged with 

 60 cobalt wire was in attendance in a depression in the sand-gravel sub- 

 strate directly beneath the eggs. Four other larvae were dip-netted 

 within 5 m of the nest site. These authors reported that, although hatch- 

 lings of both N. lewisi and N. maculosus are uniform in color and 

 nearly indistinguishable, the post-hatchling larvae of N. lewisi have 

 stripes when between 21 and 41 mm SVL. This striped pattern begins to 

 fade into the pattern described by Viosca (1937) for specimens of "3!/ 2 

 inches" (ca. 90 mm). This was the size considered by Brimley to be 

 larvae, but we now know that individuals of this size are subadults. The 

 striped pattern of post-hatchling N. lewisi is quite distinct from that of 

 post-hatchlings of all other species of Necturus. Ashton and Braswell 

 (1979:18-19) provided the first illustrations of N lewisi hatchlings and 



