Pseudotriton Tschudi, 1838

Class: Amphibia > Order: Caudata > Family: Plethodontidae > Subfamily: Hemidactyliinae > Genus: Pseudotriton
3 species

Pseudotriton Tschudi, 1838, Classif. Batr.: 60. Type species: Salamandra subfusca Green, 1818 (= Salamandra rubra Latreille, 1801), by monotypy.

Mycetoglossus Bonaparte, 1839, Iconograph. Fauna Ital., 2 (Fasc. 26): unnumbered. Name attributed to Bibron. Substitute name for Pseudotriton Tschudi, 1838. Suppressed for purposes of the Principle of Priority but not for those of the Principle of Homonymy by Opinion 1873, Anonymous, 1997, Bull. Zool. Nomencl., 54: 140-141. Synonymy by Hallowell, 1858, J. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, Ser. 2, 3: 347.

Batrachopsis Fitzinger, 1843, Syst. Rept.: 34. Substitute name for Pseudotriton Tschudi, 1838.

Pelodytes Gistel, 1848, Naturgesch. Thierr.: xi. Substitute name for Pseudotriton Tschudi, 1838). Not Pelodytes Fitzinger, 1843 (a frog).

English Names

Red Salamanders (Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 175; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 8; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 34; Collins, 1997, Herpetol. Circ., 25: 9; Crother, Boundy, Campbell, de Queiroz, Frost, Highton, Iverson, Meylan, Reeder, Seidel, Sites, Taggart, Tilley, and Wake, 2001 "2000", Herpetol. Circ., 29: 29; Tilley, Highton, and Wake, 2012, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 39: 22; Collins and Taggart, 2009, Standard Common Curr. Sci. Names N. Am. Amph. Turtles Rept. Crocodil., ed. 6: 15; Tilley, Highton, and Wake, 2012, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 39: 31; Highton, Bonett, and Jockusch, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 32).

Mud Salamanders (Collins, 1997, Herpetol. Circ., 25: 9; Crother, Boundy, Campbell, de Queiroz, Frost, Highton, Iverson, Meylan, Reeder, Seidel, Sites, Taggart, Tilley, and Wake, 2001 "2000", Herpetol. Circ., 29: 29; Collins and Taggart, 2009, Standard Common Curr. Sci. Names N. Am. Amph. Turtles Rept. Crocodil., ed. 6: 15; Tilley, Highton, and Wake, 2012, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 39: 31; Highton, Bonett, and Jockusch, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 32).

Distribution

New York to Florida and west to southern Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and to eastern Louisiana in the Gulf coastal plain, USA.

Comment

See accounts by Martof, 1975, Cat. Am. Amph. Rept., 165: 1–2, and Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 295–304. Chippindale, Bonett, Baldwin, and Wiens, 2004, Evolution, 58: 2809–2822, and Macey, 2005, Cladistics, 21: 194–202, regarded Gyrinophilus + Stereochilus as the sister taxon of Pseudotriton. R. Highton In Raffaëlli, 2007, Les Urodèles du Monde: 173, suggested that the species taxonomy is in need of revision. In the tribe Spelerpini of Vieites, Nieto-Roman, Wake, and Wake, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 59: 633. Powell, Collins, and Hooper, 2011, Key Herpetofauna U.S. & Canada, 2nd Ed.: 16, provided a key to the species. See comment under Gyrinophilus for additional relevant literature. Bonett, Steffen, Lambert, Wiens, and Chippindale, 2014 "2013", Evolution, 68: 466-482, provided the beginnings of a phylogenetic understanding of the contained species and suggested that Pseudotriton may be paraphyletic with respect to Gyrinophilus, with Pseudotriton montanus forming the sister taxon of Gyrinophilus and Pseudotriton ruber forming the sister taxon of that clade. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 502–513, provided species and subspecies accounts, summarizing systematics, life history, population status, and distribution (including a polygon map).   

Contained taxa (3 sp.):

Pseudotriton diastictus Bishop, 1941
Pseudotriton montanus Baird, 1850
Pseudotriton ruber (Sonnini de Manoncourt and Latreille, 1801)

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