Eurycea quadridigitata (Holbrook, 1842)

Common Names

Florida Manculus (Manculus remifer [no longer recognized]: Yarrow, 1882, Bull. U.S. Natl. Mus., 24: 22).

Four-fingered Manculus (Eurycea quadridigitata: Yarrow, 1882, Bull. U.S. Natl. Mus., 24: 22).

Dwarf Salamander (Eurycea quadridigitata: Brimley, 1907, J. Elisha Mitchell Sci. Soc., 23:  151; Strecker, 1928, Contr. Baylor Univ. Mus., 16: 8; Carr, 1940, Univ. Florida Biol. Sci. Ser., 3: 48; Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 174; Conant, 1975, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am., Ed. 2: 292; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 6; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 31; Collins, 1997, Herpetol. Circ., 25: 7; Crother, Boundy, Campbell, de Queiroz, Frost, Highton, Iverson, Meylan, Reeder, Seidel, Sites, Taggart, Tilley, and Wake, 2001 "2000", Herpetol. Circ., 29: 23; Tilley, Highton, and Wake, 2012, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 39: 27; Powell, Conant, and Collins, 2016, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. North Am., 4th ed.: 57).

Coastal Plain Dwarf Salamander (Eurycea quadridigitata: Collins and Taggart, 2009, Standard Common Curr. Sci. Names N. Am. Amph. Turtles Rept. Crocodil., ed. 6: 12).

Dwarf Four-toed Salamander (Eurycea quadridigitata: Bishop, 1943, Handb. Salamanders: 446; Schmidt, 1953, Check List N. Am. Amph. Rept., Ed. 6: 56).

Florida Dwarf Salamander (Eurycea quadridigitata remifer: Carr, 1940, Univ. Florida Biol. Sci. Ser., 3: 48).

Southeastern Dwarf Salamander (Wray, Means, and Steppan, 2017, Herpetol. Monogr., 31: 35; Highton, Bonett, and Jockusch, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 28). 

Distribution

Throughout the Coastal Plain from southern North Carolina southward through the eastern half of South Carolina and into southern Georgia and all of Florida; documented in extreme southwestern Alabama and extreme eastern Louisiana, although expected in coastal cypress wetlands of southern Alabama and Mississippi, USA. 

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: United States of America, United States of America - Florida, United States of America - Georgia, United States of America - Louisiana, United States of America - North Carolina, United States of America - South Carolina

Likely/Controversially Present: United States of America - Alabama

Endemic: United States of America

Comment

 Wray, Means, and Steppan, 2017, Herpetol. Monogr., 31: 18–46, redelimited the species in the complex and restricted the range of this nominal species. Literature before this revision should be used with caution inasmuch as literature prior to 2017 conflates Eurycea chamberlaini, Eurycea sphagnicola, Eurycea hillisi, and Eurycea paludicola with Eurycea quadridigitata. See account (as Manculus quadridigitatus) by Mittleman, 1967, Cat. Am. Amph. Rept., 44: 1–2. Confused in the literature with Eurycea chamberlaini Harrison and Guttman, 2003, of North and South Carolina, which had been considered until its description to be a color phase of Eurycea quadridigitata. Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 269–272, provided a detailed account (in the sense of including Eurycea chamberlaini). Bonett and Chippindale, 2005, in Lannoo (ed.), Amph. Declines: 759–760, provided a detailed account that summarized the biology and conservation literature. Lamb and Beamer, 2012, PLoS One, 7: e37544 (1–8), reported on cryptic species within nominal Eurycea quadridigitata complex, suggesting that the Edwards Plateau complex of neotenic species render nominal Eurycea quadridigitata paraphyletic. Their data suggest that there is one lineage ("western" [southern Arkansas, Louisiana, probably southwestern Mississippi, and eastern Texas]) that is most closely related to the Edwards Plateau group of species, that Eurycea chamberlaini is the closest relative of Eurycea quadridigitata sensu stricto and that at least two other lineages ("Florida panhandle" and "central" [soutwestern Alabama to east-central Georgia]) are distinguishable on the basis of molecular data. Bonett, Steffen, Lambert, Wiens, and Chippindale, 2014 "2013", Evolution, 68: 473, provided a molecular tree that suggests that cryptic species within Eurcyea quadridigitatus; the interpretation by Fouquette and Dubois, 2014, Checklist N.A. Amph. Rept.: 143, that the same tree suggests that Eurycea chamberlaini may be conspecific with nominal Eurycea quadridigitata appears to a rest on an older species concept than applied by most workers today, especially because this tree shows some populations of Eurycea "quadridigitata" being more closely related to the Edwards Plateau species (as previously suggested by Lamb and Beame, 2012) than to other populations outside of that inclusive clade (which are closer to Eurycea chamberlaini). Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 247, provided a brief account, photograph, and map. Altig and McDiarmid, 2015, Handb. Larval Amph. US and Canada: 115–116, provided an account of larval morphology and biology. See account of biology and life history in South Florida by Meshaka and Lane, 2015, Herpetol. Conserv. Biol., 10 (Monogr. 5): 14–15. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 554–556, provided an account, summarizing systematics, life history, population status, and distribution (including a polygon map).

External links:

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• For access to general information see Wikipedia
• For additional sources of general information from other websites search Google
• For access to relevant technical literature search Google Scholar
• For images search CalPhoto Images and Google Images
• To search the NIH genetic sequence database, see GenBank
• For additional information see AmphibiaWeb report
• For information on conservation status and distribution see the IUCN Redlist
• For information on distribution, habitat, and conservation see the Map of Life
• For related information on conservation and images as well as observations see iNaturalist