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Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:Ilian Velikov wrote:
Jeroen, now you're just showing off...

All for the benefit of helping Matthijs to make something useful out of his otherwise futile existence.

Fair enough.

Jeroen Speybroeck wrote:I bet that within Bulgaria variation will be important, in view of proximity to the sea and altitude. Areas with harsh winter conditions are likely to, as I explained, only have a post-winter deposition season, making old larvae in August not a rare sight

There's variation for sure but from what I'm reading in Bulgarian guides the most common for the country is for the salamanders to mate in summer and deposit larvae in autumn, consequently some of them overwintering. This is also in line with what I've observed in a few years in Western Stara Planina (altitude between 400 - 800 m asl ) where winter could be quite cold (well below 0 C) with fair amount of snow. I've seen larvae in January (with some snow present) and in spring, but I've never seen any in July (until now). Although I've seen a female getting ready to deposit larvae in spring, so this surely happens and I guess it differs depending on the conditions from year to year.

Talking about overwintering larvae - Do they stay active if they overwinter or do they go into a dormant state? The ones I've seen at one particular site were pretty much active in a slowly flowing water that was not frozen.