The Hida salamander or Hondo salamander (''Hynobius kimurae'') is a species of salamander in the family Hynobiidae, the Asiatic salamanders. It is endemic to central and western Honshu,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It lives in deciduous, coniferous, and mixed forests, where it breeds in streams. The egg sacs of this species were reported to display blue-to-yellow

iridescent Iridescence (also known as goniochromism) is the phenomenon of certain surfaces that appear to gradually change color as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes. Examples of iridescence include soap bubbles, feathers, butterfl ...

glow due to a quasi-periodic diffraction grating structure embedded within the enveloppes of the egg sacs. These salamanders typically spawn from February to April, leading some to metamorphose in late September while others wait for the following year to do so after winter is over.

References

Hynobius Endemic amphibians of Japan Amphibians described in 1923 Taxa named by Emmett Reid Dunn Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{salamander-stub