Male Courtship Behavior of Tylototriton (Echinotriton) andersoni Boulenger under Laboratory Conditions

Abstract

We observed male courtship behavior of Tylototriton (Echinotriton) andersoni in the laboratory. In some males, the cloaca swelled and became wet with mucous secretions from December to May. A male in this condition crept around a female, sniffing around her body and drawing a thread of mucus from his cloaca, so that the female was surrounded by spiderweb-like string of mucous attached to the substrate. The male then deposited a spermatophore by rubbing his cloaca against the substratum while swaying his body to and fro. The male behaved similarly towards females from different localities, though we could not observe any female reaction to the male. Under a phase-contrast microscope, the gross morphology of sperms from a male from Amamioshima Island was similar to that reported for males from Okinawajima.