Desmognathus perlapsus Neill, 1950

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

Desmognathus perlapsus Neill, 1950, Publ. Res. Div. Ross Allen’s Rept. Inst., 1: 1. Holotype: ERA-WTN 14150 (to be deposited in UF), by original designation. Type locality: "rocky outcropping on the western wall of Tallulah Gorge, near the town of Tallulah Falls, Rabun County, Georgia", USA. 

Desmognathus perlapsis — Fouquette and Dubois, 2014, Checklist N.A. Amph. Rept.: 169. Incorrect subsequent spelling of Desmognathus perlapsus Neill, 1950.  

English Names

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

Cliffside Salamander (Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 174; Conant, 1958, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am.: 225).

Tallulah Dusky Salamander (Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 986). 

Distribution

Alarka and Cowee Mountains in southwestern North Carolina between the Tuckasegee and Little Tennessee Rivers, the western headwater mountain streams of the Savannah River drainage in northwestern South Carolina, northeastern Georgia, and adjacent North Carolina, and the Chattahoochee River drainage in the Piedmont of Georgia and Alabama to the Fall Line and Uchee Creek (Russell County, Alabama) in the adjacent Coastal Plain, USA.

Geographic Occurrence

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

Endemic: United States of America

Comment

Removed from the synonymy of Desmognathus ocoee by Pyron and Beamer, 2022, Zootaxa, 5190: 226, where it had been placed by Valentine, 1961, Copeia, 1961: 315–322. Corresponds to the Desmognathus ocoee C and D lineages as delimited by Kozak, Larson, Bonett, and Harmon, 2005, Evolution, 59: 2000–2016, Beamer and Lamb, 2020, Zootaxa, 4734: 1–61, Pyron, O'Connell, Lemmon, Lemmon, and Beamer, 2020, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 146 (106751): 1–13, and Pyron, O'Connell, Lemmon, Lemmon, and Beamer, 2022, Ecol. Evol., 12 (2: e8574): 1–38, according to  Pyron and Beamer, 2022, Zootaxa, 5190: 207–240, where mtDNA, nuDNA, and morphological evidence were discussed. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 986–987, provided an account summarizing systematics, morphology, life history, population status, and distribution (including a polygon map). 

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