Amphibia · Caudata
Lyciasalamandra billaeFranzen & Klewen, 1987
Bille's Salamander
Photograph by Wouter Beukema, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
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A salamander reaching 139 mm nose to tail.
Also called Bay Lycian Salamander, Luschan’s salamander.
Amphibia › Caudata › Salamandridae › Lyciasalamandra
- Grows to
- 139mm
- greatest recorded
- Lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
- Red List
- Endangered
Longer than only 28% of all salamanders anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 60 to 324 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
15 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Conservation status
- Endangered
- Population trend
- Decreasing
as reported by the IUCN Red List
Size
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 74mm3 in
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 139mm5.5 in
- Female length · mean, nose to tail
- 130mm5 in
mean adult female snout-to-vent length
total length, tail included — this source reports total length for Caudata and Gymnophiona
mean adult female total length, tail included
How it lives
- Eats arthropods
- Unknown
- Eats vertebrates
- Unknown
- Eats plant matter
- Unknown
- Where it lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
a blank flag in this source means unrecorded, not absent
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Viviparous
- Average clutch
- 2
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
midpoint of the reported range — Pincheira-Donoso, Harvey, Cotter, Stark, Meiri, and Hodgson, 2021, Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr., 30:1299-1310
Naming and history
- Described by
- Franzen & Klewen
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1987
Keeping one
Bille's Salamander is assessed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.
- Land
- 111 × 56cm
- Water, at least 28 cm deep
- 28 × 56cm
Minimum, and for two animals — which is how the standard states it. Bigger is always better. Around 56 cm tall on average.
The standard gives 8 × 4 body lengths of land and 2 × 4 of water, for two animals.
For each further animal the standard asks for another 28 × 28 cm of land and 14 × 14 cm of water.
Swiss Tierschutzverordnung (TSchV), SR 455.1, Anhang 2, Tabelle 6 — legally binding minimum enclosure sizes for amphibians, given as multiples of total body length and stated for two animals.
From this animal’s own total length of 5.5 in (139 mm) — how this is worked out.
Bille's Salamander
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Still living
- — Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · greatest
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Longest recorded life
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Diet
- — How it hunts
- — Active
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Smallest clutch recorded
- — Largest clutch recorded
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Venomous
- — Fangs
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Limbs
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Red List criteria
- — Region
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Suborder
- — Infraorder
- — Subspecies
- — Type locality
- — Habitat
- — Active in
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Salamandridae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Lyciasalamandra billae. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/lyciasalamandra-billae
@misc{lyciasalamandra_billae_2026,
title = {Lyciasalamandra billae},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/lyciasalamandra-billae}
}Sources
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
- Oliveira, B.F. et al. (2017). AmphiBIO, a global database for amphibian ecological traits. Scientific Data 4:170123. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- GBIF Secretariat. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Used under CC BY 4.0. Common names aggregated from constituent checklists.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Huang, N. et al. (2023). Amphibian traits database: a global database on morphological traits of amphibians. Global Ecology and Biogeography 32, 633-641. Used under CC BY 4.0.