Iftah Sinai Israel Nature and Parks Authority, Man and his world street, Jerusalem, Israel.
Ori Segev - Institute of Evolution and Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa 3498838, Israel.
Avi Koplovich - Institute of Evolution and Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa 3498838, Israel.
Alan R. Templeton Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Leon Blaustein - Institute of Evolution and Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa 3498838, Israel.
 

 Effective amphibian conservation requires knowledge of both the aquatic and terrestrial phases of life. As extinction probabilities are a function of population size, it is crucial not only to understand the habitat requirement of the species but also to estimate its population size. In this work, we studied the endangered fire salamander, Salamandra infraimmaculata, and analyzed the population size at a total of 14 sites—eight temporary and six permanent. For identifying the local and landscape scales factors predicting S. infraimmaculata’s breeding sites we monitored 54 aquatic sites. We found that permanent sites support larger populations of adult salamanders. The breeding site characteristics analyses revealed that at the local scale water depth and shade were the most important factors and two regional variables were found to be important: proximity to another breeding site and elevation. This work provides two clear conservation implications permanent breeding sites will support much larger populations compared to temporary sites, particularly if close to other potential breeding sites, and both terrestrial and aquatic features are important for a site to be suitable for breeding.