When Spring arrives and newts migrate to their ponds, they prepare themselves to reproduce. Especially males grow large crests and undergo a dramatic color change. Everything in order to attract as much females – which do not grow obvious mating ornaments – as possible. It is already known for quite some time, that beside these visual cues, males also secrete pheromones to influence female behaviour. One can easily observe this when the male is waving his pheromones towards the female with his tail. Our lab researched this behaviour in the past years and we discovered that this chemical communication is far more important than previously thought. We showed that, when two females are placed together in a box of water containing pheromones secreted by a male, they will be attracted to each other and are willing to mate. In other words, with the presence of those pheromones, it doesn’t matter how the “male” looks like! Our findings were published in PLOS ONE and you can read the paper by clicking here. On the bottom of the page you will find three movies nicely demonstrating this behaviour. Below some pictures of newts I made in the past years (wild animals placed in an aquarium to photograph them). The opening picture on top shows a male Alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris) during the breeding season.
male Smooth newt (Lissotriton vulgaris)
female Smooth newt (Lissotriton vulgaris)
portrait of a male Alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris)