Taricha torosa

FIGURE 3.3 Glands in salamanders, [a) Genial glands on the side of the head of Notophthalmus viridescens (6) diffuse submandibular glands of Taricha torosa ... 

TTX had long been believed to distribute exclusively in pufferfishes. Twenty years ago, a paralytic toxin was found in the ovaries of the California newt Taricha torosa and named tarichatoxin ( ). Identity of this toxin with TTX was demonstrated later. Tarichatoxin or TTX was also detected in the skin, muscle, blood of the California newt, as well as other species of the genus Taricha. 

The highly toxic guanidinium alkaloid tetrodotoxin was first isolated from the Japanese puffer fish, Fuga rubipes. In the early 1960s, a guanidinium alkaloid was isolated from eggs of the California newt Taricha torosa and named tarichatoxin (185). It proved identical with tetrodotoxin from puffer fish (186 see Ref. 5 for a historical review). Tetrodotoxin and other guanidinium toxins, namely, chiriquitoxin and the zetekitoxins, have been shown to occur in other amphibians. 

Tetrodotoxin, a fully saturated 2-aminopolyhydroxyquinazoline, is a powerful nonprotein neurotoxin which occurs in the liver and ovaries of the Japanese puffer fish Sphoerides rubripes and S. phyreus, and in the Californian newt or salamander Taricha torosa <79AJC1805>. 

Tetrodotoxin, however, has been isolated from the Californian newts Taricha torosa, Taricha rivularis, and Taricha granulosa it has formerly been called tarichatoxin but was later found to be identical with tetrodotoxin from Tetraodontidae. We now know that tetrodotoxin is a bacterial toxin (ref. 29) but we have no idea about this kind of symbiosis between bacteria and amphibia. It certainly does not act as a fungicide or bactericide (ref. 30) but it might act as a repellent against predators of the animals themselves or of their egg clusters as has been observed in Tetrodotoxin containing fish. 

Spoeroides rubripes Taricha torosa Tritus ensicanda (see 212)... 

Elliott, S.A., L.B. Kats J.A. Breeding. 1993. The use of conspecific chemical cues for cannibal avoidance in California newts (Taricha torosa). Ethology 95 186-192. 

Kats, L.B., J.A. Breeding, K.M. Hanson P. Smith. 1994. Ontogenetic changes in California newts Taricha torosa) in response to chemical cues from conspecific predators. J. North. Am. Benthol. Soc. 13 321-325. 

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