Desmognathus monticola Dunn, 1916

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

Desmognathus monticola Dunn, 1916, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 29: 73. Holotype: USNM 38313, by original designation. Type locality: "Elk Lodge Lake, near Brevard, [Transylvania County,] North Carolina; altitude about 3000 feet", USA.

Desmognathus monticola monticolaHoffman, 1951, J. Elisha Mitchell Sci. Soc., 67: 251.

Desmognathus monticola jeffersoni Hoffman, 1951, J. Elisha Mitchell Sci. Soc., 67: 250. Holotype: USNM 126891, by original designation. Type locality: "Saddle Hollow on Jarman's Mountain, 2 miles west of Crozet, Albemarle County, Virginia (elevation 1600 feet)", USA.

Desmognathus (Desmognathus) monticolaDubois and Raffaëlli, 2012, Alytes, 28: 144. See comment under Desmognathus regarding the status of the subgenus. 

English Names

Seal Salamander (Desmognathus monticola: Bishop, 1943, Handb. Salamanders: 205; 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; Conant, 1975, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am., Ed. 2: 265; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 5; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 31; Collins, 1997, Herpetol. Circ., 25: 6; Crother, Boundy, Campbell, de Queiroz, Frost, Highton, Iverson, Meylan, Reeder, Seidel, Sites, Taggart, Tilley, and Wake, 2001 "2000", Herpetol. Circ., 29: 21; Tilley, Highton, and Wake, 2012, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 39: 16; Collins and Taggart, 2009, Standard Common Curr. Sci. Names N. Am. Amph. Turtles Rept. Crocodil., ed. 6: 12; 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.: 47; Highton, Bonett, and Jockusch, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 26).

Seal Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus monticolaRaffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 989).

Blue Ridge Seal Salamander (Desmognathus monticola jeffersoni: Schmidt, 1953, Check List N. Am. Amph. Rept., Ed. 6: 30).

Virginia Seal Salamander (Desmognathus monticola jeffersoni: 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: 266; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 5).

Seal Salamander (Desmognathus monticola monticola: Schmidt, 1953, Check List N. Am. Amph. Rept., Ed. 6: 30).

Appalachian Seal Salamander (Desmognathus monticola monticola: 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: 266; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 5).

Distribution

Western Pennsylvania and western Maryland south along the Appalachian highlands through West Virginia, western Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, extreme western South Carolina, and northwestern Georgia, USA; introduced populations in extreme southwestern Missouri (Benton County), USA., and northwestern Arkansas, USA. 

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: United States of America, United States of America - Georgia, United States of America - Kentucky, United States of America - Maryland, United States of America - North Carolina, United States of America - Pennsylvania, United States of America - South Carolina, United States of America - Tennessee, United States of America - Virginia, United States of America - West Virginia

Endemic: United States of America

Introduced: United States of America - Arkansas

Comment

Before Grobman, 1945, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 58: 40, this species was commonly referred to as Desmognathus phoca. Beamer and Lamb, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 47: 143v153, discussed a population of Desmognathus conanti that had previously been confused with Desmognathus monticola in the Red Hills of Alabama. Kozak, Larson, Bonett, and Harmon, 2005, Evolution, 59: 2000–2016, provided a molecular phylogenetics study that suggested two species under this name. Bonett, Kozak, Vieites, Bare, Wooten, and Trauth, 2007, BMC Ecol., 7(7): 1–11, discussed phylogeography and a seemingly introduced population in the Arkansas Ozarks. Matson, Pfingsten, Davic, and Pucci, 2010, Herpetol. Rev., 41: 17–18, rejected the record by Graziano and Reid, 2006, J. Kansas Herpetol., 17: 6, for southern Ohio as based on misidentified Desmognathus fuscus. See account by Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 187–192. See comment under Desmognathus fuscus regarding the nomenclature of the species name. Camp and Tilley, 2005, in Lannoo (ed.), Amph. Declines: 713–716, provided an account containing a detailed summary of the literature and range. Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 429, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map. Altig and McDiarmid, 2015, Handb. Larval Amph. US and Canada: 104–105, provided an account of larval morphology. Bush, Guzy, Halloran, Swartwout, Kross, and Willson, 2017, Copeia, 2017: 678–688, reported on an introduced population in Benton County, extreme northwestern Arkansas, USA, on Spavinaw Creek. Beamer and Lamb, 2020, Zootaxa, 4734: 1–61, in their discussion of Desmognathus mtDNA phylogenetics, discussed phylogeographic structure. Regester, Hoffman, Patterson, and Timashenka, 2020, Cat. Am. Amph. Rept., 925: 1–60, reviewed the literature of the species and provided photographs and a range map. Holzheuser and Means, 2021, Herpetol. Conserv. Biol., 16: 506–512, discussed the apparent extirpation of the Florida, USA, population. Pyron, O'Connell, Lemmon, Lemmon, and Beamer, 2022, Ecol. Evol., 12 (2: e8574): 1–38, provided molecular evidence that Desmognathus monticola is composed of multiple lineage-species. Populations from northwestern Georgia, to southwestern Alabama, and northwestern Florida, USA, now assigned to Desmognathus cheahaTighe, 2022, Smithson. Contrib. Zool., 654: 28–29, noted the current location of paratypes of Desmognathus monticola and Desmognathus monticola jeffersoni. Introduced population in Arkansas, USA, discussed and mapped to county by Meshaka, Collins, Bury, and McCallum, 2022, Exotic Amph. Rept. USA: 22–23.

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