It is found in damp, forested areas, usually under leaves, rotting logs, or in abandoned ground holes of other organisms, near shallow ponds.

There are two arrays of vomerine teeth—teeth along a thin bone that form the inferior and posterior part of the nasal septum and divide the nostrils.

The dorsal color of adults can range from dark gray to blackish brown decorated with white to yellowish bands and light-colored dots.

During non-breeding seasons, adults hide under leaves, rotting logs, or abandoned holes on the ground in damp forest areas.

[5] Most ringed salamanders are found in the vicinity of Hot Springs, Arkansas, and the Missouri portion of the Ozark Plateau.

[2] Ringed salamander is endemic to the Ozark plateau and the Ouachita Mountains of southern Missouri, Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma.

However, a reduction of rain and numbers of filling ponds during September and October can cause a great decrease in ringed salamander's breeding efforts and egg depositions.

[10] Although average canopy cover and leaf litter depth do not significantly relate to ringed salamander's occupancy, continuous forests are highly associated with its breeding wetlands.

[12][13] There are two major areas of focus for maximizing the proliferation of ringed salamanders, which concentrate on minimizing the local extinction of both juveniles and adults and maintaining metapopulation dynamics respectively.

A study has shown that a core terrestrial habitat with a radius of 200-500m from the pond edge must be established to provide enough space for the survival of breeding adults, especially during their first reproduction.

[10] Molecular evidence from nuclear microsatellites and mitochondrial DNA analysis shows that populations of ringed salamanders in the Central Interior Highlands ecoregion are separated into two.

The cannibals differ from their conspecific prey by having twice longer mean body lengths and slightly broader heads.

[10] Annual cycle of air and soil temperatures ensures that adults enter reproductive conditions in time, but autumn rainfall is the major factor that triggers breeding migration, and the precipitation threshold must be at least 1.27 cm.

A huge variation of breeding population size exists across ponds and years, which is positively correlated with the amount of rainfall during migration season.

[10] Males start to migrate to breeding ponds as early as August, which is earlier than females with the earliest record in September.

The contraction spread posteriorly from a point 2.5 from the front to the rear legs, depositing eggs from the cloaca one at a time in a row.

Unlike spring breeding species, ringed salamander larvae overwinter under the ice in their birth ponds.

Larvae mortality can be caused by freezing, drying, low pH, predation including cannibalism, and disease.

The average survival rate of juveniles from eggs to metamorphosis is only 0.2%, which is really low and doesn't vary much among ponds or years.

A larger body size corresponds to a high probability of surviving, a younger age at first reproduction, and a longer lifespan.

This is the opposite trend compared to spotted salamanders, of which juveniles metamorphose later are larger, and have higher fitness.

Lab experiments have proved that embryos exposed to odors of prey species like shrimp and mussel show attraction to those stimuli post-hatching.

[3] Embryotic exposures to chemical stimuli from cannibalistic larvae or predators, such as Eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) and dragonfly nymphs, resulted in increasing use of habitat refuge (vegetation cover) and decreasing activities post-hatching.

Social learning is commonly thought to exist only in group-living organisms, but it can happen in non-gregarious species like ringed salamanders as well.

Ringed salamander larvae can form temporary high-density groups during a short period after hatching, which provides the environment for social learning.

Rhabditid nematodes (Rhabdias ranae) are the second most common parasite that infests A. annulatum's lungs and body cavities.

Other relatively rare parasites include gall bladder myxosporean (Myxidium serotinum) and tissue-dwelling spirurids that are usually en-cysted in ringed salamanders' stomach walls.