their life in water, both sexes develop a tail fin, and males a low (up to 2.5 mm), smooth-edged crest on their back. The cloaca of males swells during breeding season. The skin is smooth during the breeding season and granular outside it, and is velvety during the animal's land phase. The characteristic dark grey to bright blue of the back and sides is strongest during breeding season. This base colour may vary to greenish and is more drab and mottled in females. The belly and throat are orange and only occasionally have dark spots. Males have a white band with black spots and a light blue flash running along the flanks from the cheeks to the tail. During breeding season, their crest is white with regular dark spots. Juvenile efts, just after metamorphosis, resemble adult terrestrial females, but sometimes have a red or yellow line on the back. Very rarely, leucistic individuals have been observed. While these traits apply to the widespread nominate subspecies, I. a. alpestris, the other subspecies differ slightly. I. a. apuana often has dark spots on the throat and sometimes on the belly. I. a. cyreni has a slightly rounder and larger skull than the nominate subspecies but is otherwise very similar. In I. a. veluchiensis, females have a more greenish colour, spots on the belly, sparse dark spots on the lower tail edge, and a narrower snout, but these differences between subspecies are not consistent. Larvae are 7–11 mm long after hatching and grow to just before metamorphosis. They initially have only two small filaments (balancers), between the eyes and gills on each side of the head, which later disappear as the forelegs and then the hindlegs develop. The larvae are light brown to yellow and initially have dark longitudinal stripes, which later dissolve into a dark pigmentation that is stronger towards the tail. The tail is pointed and sometimes ends in a short filament. Alpine newt larvae are more robust and have wider heads than those of the smooth newt and palmate newt. Distribution The alpine newt is native to continental Europe. It is relatively common over a large, more or less continuous range from northwestern France to the Carpathians in Romania, and from southern Denmark in the north to the Alps and France just north of the Mediterranean in the south, but absent from the Pannonian basin. Isolated areas of distribution in