nd | | |
buprestids) | 8 } | 30.9 | 7
larvae | 38 } | |
| | |
Hymenoptera | | |
ants | 62 | 40.2 | 7
wasps | 2 | 1.3 | 2
| | |
Unidentified | 5 | 3.2 | 5
+----------+-----------+-------------
Total | 154 | 100.0 |
---------------------------------+----------+-----------+-------------

Adult and larval beetles comprised about 28 per cent of the total items,
but were found in only seven of the stomachs. Beetles eaten were small
representatives of beetle groups likely to occur in or under logs. A
relatively large species of spider was found in nine stomachs; it
represented only ten per cent of the items taken but was one of the most
important foods when mass is considered.

Two adult salamanders not included in Table 1 were found, in the course
of examination for parasites, to have empty stomachs. One was a male,
and the other was a female taken from a chamber that held an egg
cluster. It would not be surprising regularly to find stomachs empty in
"incubating" females, but the fact is that the one other such female
collected by us had a small amount of food in the gut; probably these
individuals take anything that enters the egg chamber, but do not leave
for active pursuit of food.

Foraging behavior of captive salamanders was observed by one of us. The
salamanders were maintained in a seven-gallon aquarium, the floor of
which was covered with soil, mosses, liverworts, certain flowering
plants, and pieces of rotten fir log. The salamanders were placed in
the terrarium in September, 1956, July, 1957, and October, 1958; one
individual lived 13 months, another 14 months.

A variety of natural foods was present in the soil and plant matter
placed in the terrarium, and these were presumably eaten as found by the
salamanders. However, the great bulk of the food used by the salamanders
was introduced for them, in the form of colonies of _Drosophila
melanogaster_ in half-pint milk bottles. We tried to keep thriving
colonies of flies, primarily of the mutant vestigial-winged type,
present in t