Description
Stout body. Coral red on the back, tail, and dorsal surfaces of limbs, and sometimes the fingers and toes. The red coloration may cover the entire back or may be reduced to a band. It may also be interspersed with a few black spots ringed by orange to gold. Sometimes a round red spot is present on each side of the head as well as red spots on the sides of the tail. The rest of the animal is a shiny jet-black (Raffaëlli 2007; Wake et al. 1980).

Distribution and Habitat

Country distribution from AmphibiaWeb's database: Guatemala, Mexico

View distribution map using BerkeleyMapper.

Central plateau of Chiapas (Mexico) and several mountainous areas of western Guatemala, including Volcán Tajumulco, the Montañas de Cuilco, and southwest and eastern Sierra de Los Cuchumatanes, as well as the upper slopes of the Guatemalan plateau near the Mexican border (Raffaëlli 2007). Occurs between 2,200 and 3,000 m asl, in interior upland forest (oak, oak-pine, or oak-pine cypress) and at the edges of clearings in cloudforest (Wake and Lynch 1976; Wake and Lynch 1988). Found terrestrially in low vegetation and under bark, but also in bromeliads (Raffaëlli 2007).

Life History, Abundance, Activity, and Special Behaviors
Breeding is by direct development (Stuart et al. 2008).

Trends and Threats
Bolitoglossa lincolni seems to be surviving where other salamander species in the department of San Marcos, Guatemala are not (Rovito et al. 2009). It can tolerate disturbed habitat but not completely open habitat (Acevedo et al. 2008), and appears to be more of a generalist than its sympatric congeners (Rovito et al. 2009). Occurs within at least one protected area, the Huitepec Ecological Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico (Stuart et al. 2008).

Possible reasons for amphibian decline

Habitat modification from deforestation, or logging related activities
Intensified agriculture or grazing
Urbanization
Habitat fragmentation

Comments
Synonymous with Bolitoglossa resplendens (Elias 1984; Wake and Lynch 1988). Hybridizes with B. franklini in a narrow secondary contact zone, in disturbed habitat near the Volcán Tajamulco, Guatemala (Wake et al. 1980).

References

Elias, P. (1984). ''Salamanders of the northwestern highlands of Guatemala.'' Contributions in Science, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 348, 1-20.

Raffaëlli, J. (2007). Les Urodèles du monde. Penclen Edition, France.

Rovito, S., Parra-Olea, G., Vásquez-Almazán, C. R., Papenfuss, T. J., and Wake, D. B. (2009). ''Dramatic declines in neotropical salamander populations are an important part of the global amphibian crisis.'' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(9), 3231-3236.

Stuart, S., Hoffmann, M., Chanson, J., Cox, N., Berridge, R., Ramani, P., Young, B. (eds) (2008). Threatened Amphibians of the World. Lynx Edicions, IUCN, and Conservation International, Barcelona, Spain; Gland, Switzerland; and Arlington, Virginia, USA.

Wake, D. B., Lynch, J. F. (1976). ''The distribution, ecology, and evolutionary history of plethodontid salamanders in tropical America.'' Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Science Bulletin, 25(1), 1-75. [link]

Wake, D. B., Yang, S. Y., and Papenfuss, T. J. (1980). ''Natural hybridization and its evolutionary implications in Guatemalan plethodontid salamanders of the genus Bolitoglossa.'' Herpetologica, 36(4), 335-345.

Wake, D. B., and Lynch, J. F. (1988). ''The taxonomic status of Bolitoglossa resplendens (Amphibia: Caudata) .'' Herpetologica, 44(1), 105-108.

Species Account Citation: AmphibiaWeb 2009 Bolitoglossa lincolni <http://amphibiaweb.org/species/3985> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed Jun 27, 2019.

Citation: AmphibiaWeb. 2019. <http://amphibiaweb.org> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed 27 Jun 2019.

AmphibiaWeb's policy on data use.