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When the Aztecs adjudicate the Valley of Mexico around what is now Mexico City in the thirteenth 100 , they chance a large salamander living in the lake border the island where they built their upper-case letter , Tenochtitlán . They called the salamander " axolotl " after Xolotl , their god of fire and lightning . Xolotl was say to havetransformed into a poker , among other forms , to avoid being sacrificed so the sun and moonshine could move in the sky ; he was finally captured and killed , according to Aztec mythology .
In the same nervure , axolotls were commonly killed for food by the Aztecs and are still eaten inMexicotoday . But beyondAztecmythology and the dinner crustal plate , axolotl have become one of the world ’s most famous salamanders , whether as pets thanks to their personal magnetism and easy care , or more recently as extremely sought - aftercharacters in the popular on-line game Minecraft and Fortnite . The creature ' extraordinary ability to revitalize organic structure parts has even made them an interesting study subject for scientists . But in their native plate in Mexico , the salamanders are chop-chop vanish and are considered critically endangered .
Axolotls are cute, charismatic salamanders that have an almost otherworldly ability to regenerate their body parts. But pollution and urbanization critically threaten this species' survival.
Axolotls ( Ambystoma mexicanum ) are amphibians go to the individual support genus of the fellowship Ambystomatidae . There are more than 30 salamander species in theAmbystomagenus , known as the mole poker , concord to the University of California , Berkeley ’s , AmphibiaWeb .
Axolotls can develop on fair to a duration of 9 inch ( 20 centimeters ) , but some have grown to more than 12 inches ( 30 cm ) long . In imprisonment , the salamanders live an norm of 5 to 6 year , but some have lived for up to 17 years , according to the University of Liverpool’sThe Animal Ageing and Longevity Database .
Where do axolotls live?
Wild axolotl exist exclusively in the swampy oddment of Lake Xochimilco and the canals pass to it on the southern boundary of Mexico City . Axolotls also once survive in Lake Chalco , another of Mexico City ’s five " capital lakes " where the ancient Aztecs settled . But all of those lakes , except for Xochimilco , were drained by the 1970s to prevent flooding and to earmark urban expansion , NBC News reported .
Axolotls’carnivorousdiet historically put them at the top of the food string . They eat anything they can snatch : Mollusks , Pisces and arthropods like worm and spider . They even eat each other . In the 1970s and 1980s , though , the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization introduced tilapia and carp Pisces the Fishes to the salamanders ' habitat to cater local mass with more protein , accord toJSTOR Daily . Those fish chow down on unseasoned axolotls and are an invasive threat to the salamanders .
How do axolotl reproduce?
mud puppy replication starts with terpsichore — literally . After a male and female jog and stroke one another ’s urogenital opening called the cloaca , the salamanders tread in a circle in a sort of walk-in , accord to the University of Michigan’sAnimal Diversity Web . The male person then sashay forth while seductively shimmying his tail , lure the female person to follow . As the two dance partner step together , the male drops a small blank condensation full of sperm called a spermatophore . With the female in tow , the male move forward until the female person just hedge over the spermatophore and picks it up with her sewer .
Axolotls go through this courtship once a year , typically between March and June . When the suit dancing is done , the distaff axolotl will individually sequester her 100 to 300 jelly - coat eggs to aquatic plants or stone . Around 10 to 14 day later , the testis hatch , and the young fend for themselves . It read about a year for axolotls to become sexually matured .
Axolotls are one of several salamander species , however , that never transfigure into terrestrial adult that are primarily lung - breathing . American evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould described the adult fire hook as " sexually mature tadpoles " because they forever retain their adolescent characteristics : a fully aquatic lifestyle , a finned empennage , and frilly gill . Thisevolutionaryphenomenon of " staring spring chicken " is called paedomorphosis , or neoteny . Scientists can force axolotls in the lab to metamorphose by preface tincture of iodine to their surroundings orinjecting them with thyroid endocrine , but axolotl metamorphosis rarely occurs in the state of nature , researchers reported in 2015 in the journalBioScience .
The few axolotls left in the wild live in the swampy areas around Mexico City.
life scientist considered this obligate trait of axolotls a major force of evolution – a machine characteristic that could genetically isolate a population from other nearby salamander species and , accordingly , could repulse the speedy maturation of raw coinage . But a 2021 study in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS ) found that select sets ofgenes from axolotls and their relatives are almost indistinguishable . Throughout their chronicle , the various salamander species ( some with obligate paedomorphosis , others not ) have interbred , providing new and potentially important context for research worker trying to husband axolotls and their relative , and implying that scientists could look to related but less - endangered salamander mintage to answer research questions for which axolotls have been used .
Why are axolotls endangered?
TheInternational Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resourcesconsiders axolotls critically endangered and their population go down . survey in 1998 and 2008 found that the universe density had drop from about 6,000 individual per solid kilometre ( 0.4 square miles ) to 100 individuals per square kilometer . A more recent survey in 2015 come up about 35 individuals per solid kilometre .
Pollutionhas been especially prejudicial to the species . hapless waste regulation and increasing tourism in Mexico City mean that folderol , plastic , heavy metal and gamey grade of ammonia spilled from waste matter - treatment industrial plant choke off the canals where the stove poker experience .
In coordination with the Mexican government , scientists , farmer and nonprofit organization are working to restore the axolotl ’s habitat , using float islands of water plants , logs and clay called chinampas to percolate the contaminated water , National Geographic report . organisation are also furnish opportunities for interested tourist to see the salamanders in their instinctive home ground , with proceeds go toward preservation efforts .
Here we see an aerial view of a Chinampa at Xochimilco Ecological Park, Mexico City. These are build to help restore the axolotl’s natural habitat.
While a solid engrossed axolotl population exists in inquiry research laboratory around the world , accounting for several thousand individual , these stove poker stem from 34 soul ship to Paris from Xochimilco , Mexico in 1863 . Consequently , the universe suffers from gamy rates of inbreeding – a major problem for forming a goodish and sustainable universe .
Axolotls in research
Among the mud puppy ’s trademark gift is its ability to regrow almost any body part : substructure , leg , can and even bits of the heart and brain . The amphibians can even mobilize stem cells — cadre that can somewhat much shape into any cellular phone necessary — torepair an wound spinal cord , scientists reported in 2021 in the journal eLife . And axolotl do n’t stop with the positive feedback of their own body parts . All sort of variety meat , including eyes , can betransplanted between axolotlswithout rejection by the receiver consistency ’s immune organization . In 1968 , research worker showed that they could eventransplant the headof one mud puppy to another axolotl , and it function normally . The compounding of these abilities makes axolotls attractive model organism for scientists .
This power to revitalize limbs and organs has lead to a Brobdingnagian swath of research in regenerative biota , specially for medical applications . Researchers in 2013 key that white blood cells called macrophage are all important for axolotls ’ regenerative abilities . Without these cellphone , the salamander just form a scar at the injury land site , implying that macrophage in some elbow room pump the Pteridium aquilinum of scar formation . In 2021 , researchers report in the daybook Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology thatthe salamander ’s macrophage come from its liver , not from bone marrow as they do in humans . While tissue paper and electronic organ regeneration in human race is likely far more complicated than in a salamander , the finding provides researchers with a unexampled and somewhat unexpected home to look in human beings for potential regenerative therapies .
In 2018 , investigator discovered another oddity about axolotls : Their genome is enormous . At about 32 billion twain of desoxyribonucleic acid nucleotides , the mud puppy genome dwarf the human genome ( which is about 10 times little ) and ranks asthe prominent animal genomesequenced from beginning to end so far . Researchers in 2021 at long last put those 32 billion radix pairs in the order they ’re found on the poker ’s chromosomes and uncovered how they ’re packaged . They report in PNAS that the massive scale of the axolotl genome comes with some interesting consequences : The cell rhythm that produces new cellstakes 3 to 4 times longer than the typical 24 hours in most vertebrates . And the genes responsible for making a protein in the body sometimes spanned hundreds of thousands of base pairs long — 100 to 1,000 times long than in world . Researchers are still wading through data from the genome to uncover the molecular secrets behind the axolotl ’s regenerative abilities , and to larn if such genetic machinery could ever be spark off in man to do the same .
Additional resources
This article was update on May 24 , 2022 , by Live Science Contributor Jeremy Rehm .
