Great Crested Newts

Family, Appearance and Lifestyle     

The great crested newt is the largest of the three newt species native to the UK, reaching up to 170mm in length with a granular appearance to the skin. In the breeding season, males have a jagged crest along the back that dips and becomes smoother along the tail, females lack this crest but have a yellow-orange stripe along the bottom of the tail. The species is long-lived, up to 27 years in captivity!

Range, Habitat, Territory and Home

While individual colonisers can travel further than a kilometer, the vast majority of newts (especially when the population is a small or medium one) tend to remain close to their breeding ponds, generally within 70m and certainly within 250m. It is not clear how newts colonise new ponds outside their normal terrestrial range, but possibly they find them by using smell.

Food

 Great crested newts eat aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates along with other newts, tadpoles and froglets.

Activity (including hibernation) and Social System

Great crested newts are nocturnal, spending the daytime on land in burrows or under log piles and emerging at night to forage in habitats that support invertebrate prey such as woodland, scrub and long, tussocky grass. They hibernate during the winter, emerging in late February or March to travel to breeding ponds to find mates and lay eggs. They generally leave the water in the late spring and spend the rest of the summer and autumn feeding on the land, entering hibernation towards the end of October or November.

Breeding – mating, season, numbers

Great crested newts spend the majority of their time on land, but must return to the water to breed. The female lays her fertilised eggs individually on the leaves of aquatic plants, around the margins of breeding ponds, folding each one around the egg to conceal it. They hatch as tadpoles after 4 weeks and take around 3 months to mature and leave the water. A period of up to three years is then spent on land by young newts attaining sexual maturity, after which they return to breeding ponds at the appropriate time of the year, following emergence from hibernation.

Threats

Despite spending most of its life on land, newts rely on water for breeding and many water bodies that provide suitable breeding habitat have been lost, either through natural succession or the destruction and filling of ponds. Terrestrial habitat has also been lost and fragmented and the use of chemicals on agricultural land has had an impact on great crested newt populations. The introduction of exotic species has also led to hybridisation in some areas.

Further reading

Tom Langton, Catherine Beckett and Jim Foster (2001). Great crested newt conservation handbook. Froglife.

Tony Gent and Steve Gibson (1998). The Herpetofauna Workers’ Manual. Joint Nature Conservation Committee.

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