Desmognathus santeetlah Tilley, 1981

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

Desmognathus santeetlah Tilley, 1981, Occas. Pap. Mus. Zool. Univ. Michigan, 695: 3. Holotype: USNM 214218, by original designation. Type locality: "from a seepage area at ca. 1219 m (4000′) in the headwaters of the N. Fork of Citico Cr. below Cherry Log Gap, Unicoi Mtns., Monroe County", Tennessee, USA.

Desmognathus fuscus santeetlahPetranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 174.

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

English Names

Santeetlah Dusky Salamander (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: 17; 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: 26; Powell, Conant, and Collins, 2016, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. North Am., 4th ed.: 51; Highton, Bonett, and Jockusch, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 26).

Distribution

Restricted to the Great Smoky, Great Balsam, and Unicoi mountains of southwestern Blue Ridge Physiographic Province (Tennessee and 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

Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 174, rejected the distinctiveness of Desmognathus santeetlah from Desmognathus fuscus, on the basis of hybridization. See comment under Desmognathus conanti. See review by Tilley, 2000, Cat. Am. Amph. Rept., 703: 1–3. Camp and Tilley, 2005, in Lannoo (ed.), Amph. Declines: 726–728, 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 complex patterns of molecular and morphological replacement and introgression involving this species, Desmognathus carolinensis, and a form referred to as the "Lemon Gap" population. Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 427–428, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map. Altig and McDiarmid, 2015, Handb. Larval Amph. US and Canada: 107–108, provided an account of larval morphology. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 998–999, provided an account summarizing systematics, morphology, life history, population status, and distribution (including a polygon map). Tighe, 2022, Smithson. Contrib. Zool., 654: 30–31, corrected the registration numbers of paratypes.  

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