Spermatophores, home

Not too long after the Spotted Salamanders start to appear in the vernal pools than sections of the leaf litter under the water begin bearing collections of little off-white-to-yellowish dots, each about the size of an adult human's little fingernail. These are called spermatophores, and, if you examine them with a hand lens—probably not a task for the squeamish—they resemble minuscule mushrooms: stalks capped by a jelly-like cap containing salamander sperm. The males tend to put them down in a group, and should any female walk by, the guys try to dance her—in some species this involves an elaborate set of steps, but in Spotteds it's more free-form—over to his section of the spermatophore field. If she likes what she sees in his woodland ballroom style, she'll park her body over his offering and take it inside her cloaca to fertilize a clutch of as many as a couple of hundred tiny eggs. Over the next couple of weeks, there may be other opportunities for guy salamanders to deposit spermatophores—and for potential mates to size up the gentlemen as one-night mate material.