Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
Single word	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Desmognathus carolinensis Dunn, 1916

Class: Amphibia > Order: Caudata > Family: Plethodontidae > Subfamily: Plethodontinae > Genus: Desmognathus > Species: Desmognathus carolinensis

Desmognathus ochrophaea carolinensis Dunn, 1916, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 29: 74. Holotype: USNM 31135, by original designation. Type locality: "spring near top of Mt. Mitchell, [Buncombe County,] North Carolina, altitude 'over 6500 feet'", USA.

Desmognathus fuscus carolinensis — Pope, 1924, Am. Mus. Novit., 153: 4.

Desmognathus carolinensis — Brimley, 1928, Copeia, 166: 21; Tilley and Mahoney, 1996, Herpetol. Monogr., 10: 23.

Desmognathus ochrophaeus carolinensis — Bishop, 1943, Handb. Salamanders: 203.

Desmognathus (Desmognathus) carolinensis — Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2012, Alytes, 28: 144. See generic record for comment on the status of these subgenera.

Common Names

Carolina Mountain Salamander (Bishop, 1943, Handb. Salamanders: 203).

Blue Ridge Mountain Salamander (Schmidt, 1953, Check List N. Am. Amph. Rept., Ed. 6: 30; Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 174).

Carolina Dusky Salamander (Collins, 1997, Herpetol. Circ., 25: 6; Collins and Taggart, 2009, Standard Common Curr. Sci. Names N. Am. Amph. Turtles Rept. Crocodil., ed. 6: 11).

Carolina Mountain Dusky Salamander (Crother, Boundy, Campbell, de Queiroz, Frost, Highton, Iverson, Meylan, Reeder, Seidel, Sites, Taggart, Tilley, and Wake, 2001 "2000", Herpetol. Circ., 29: 20; Tilley, Highton, and Wake, 2012, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 39: 16; Tilley, Highton, and Wake, 2012, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 39: 25; Powell, Conant, and Collins, 2016, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. North Am., 4th ed.: 43; Highton, Bonett, and Jockusch, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 25).

Distribution

Southwestern Blue Ridge region from between Linville Falls and McKinney Gap (Burke and McDowell counties, North Carolina) on the Blue Ridge Divide and Iron Mountain Gap on the North Carolina–Tennessee boundary (Mitchell-Unicoi counties, North Carolina–Tennessee) to the valley of the Pigeon River (Haywood and Buncombe counties, North Carolina), USA.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: United States of America, United States of America - North Carolina, United States of America - Tennessee

Endemic: United States of America

Comment

Removed from the synonymy of Desmognathus ochrophaeus by Tilley and Mahoney, 1996, Herpetol. Monogr., 10: 1–42. Tilley, 1997, J. Heredity, 88: 305–315, noted that strong genetic differentiation over short distances. Mead and Tilley, 2000, in Bruce et al., Biol. Plethodontid Salamanders: 181–198, reported on a hybrid zone between Desmognathus carolinensis and Desmognathus orestes. Highton, 2000, in Bruce et al., Biol. Plethodontid Salamanders: 231, suggested that two species might be covered under this one name. See comment under Desmognathus fuscus and Desmognathus santeetlah egarding complex molecular and morphological patterns in eastern Tennessee. See Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 169–173, for a detailed account. Camp and Tilley, 2005, in Lannoo (ed.), Amph. Declines: 703–705, provided an account containing a detailed summary of the literature and range. Tilley, Bernardo, Katz, López, Roll, Eriksen, Kratovil, Bittner, and Crandall, 2013, Ecol. Evol., 3: 2547–2567. reported on a population morphologically indistinguishable from this species which hybridizes with Desmognathus carolinensis and Desmognathus santeetlah and another unnamed form. Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 423, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map. Altig and McDiarmid, 2015, Handb. Larval Amph. US and Canada: 105–106, provided an account of larval morphology. Beamer and Lamb, 2020, Zootaxa, 4734: 1–61, in their discussion of Desmognathus mtDNA phylogenetics, discussed the intercalation of mtDNA haplotypes with various populations of Desmognathus fuscus. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 981–982, provided an account summarizing systematics, morphology, life history, population status, and distribution (including a polygon map). Tighe, 2022, Smithson. Contrib. Zool., 654: 29, noted the current location of paratypes of Desmognathus ochrophaeus carolinensis.

External links:

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For access to general information see Wikipedia
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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
For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.