salamander

Here, slender salamanders slink through the leaf litter under robust stands of Santa Cruz Island buckwheat and California fuchsia.

Rachel Nuwer and Chang W. Lee each joined a nighttime salamander hunt in Kyoto, Japan, and visited a herpetology lab at Kyoto University while reporting this article.

In the animal kingdom, some of the largest genomes include certain lungfishes and salamander at about 120 billion base pairs.

Frogs, salamanders and lungfish had far bigger genomes than humans did.

The species they support range from tiger salamanders to desert pupfish, and from songbirds to mammals such as ground squirrels and bighorn sheep.