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

Plethodon serratus Grobman, 1944

Class: Amphibia > Order: Caudata > Family: Plethodontidae > Subfamily: Plethodontinae > Genus: Plethodon > Species: Plethodon serratus

Plethodon cinereus serratus Grobman, 1944, Ann. New York Acad. Sci., 45: 306. Holotype: FMNH 39464, by original designation. Type locality: "Rich Mountain, Polk County, Arkansas [USA], at an altitude of 2500 feet".

Plethodon cinereus polycentratus Highton and Grobman, 1956, Herpetologica, 12: 185. Holotype: UF 8376, by original designation. Type locality: "2 miles northeast of Palmetto, Fulton County, Georgia", USA. Synonymy by Highton and Webster, 1976, Evolution, 30: 42.

Plethodon serratus — Highton and Webster, 1976, Evolution, 30: 40.

Plethodon (Plethodon) serratus — Vieites, Nieto-Roman, Wake, and Wake, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 59: 632, by implication.

Common Names

Ouachita Red-backed Salamander (Plethodon serratus: Schmidt, 1953, Check List N. Am. Amph. Rept., Ed. 6: 34; Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 175; Conant, 1975, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am., Ed. 2: 273).

Southern Redback Salamander (Plethodon serratus: Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 8; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 33; Collins, 1997, Herpetol. Circ., 25: 9; Collins and Taggart, 2009, Standard Common Curr. Sci. Names N. Am. Amph. Turtles Rept. Crocodil., ed. 6: 14).

Southern Red-backed Salamander (Plethodon serratus: Crother, Boundy, Campbell, de Queiroz, Frost, Highton, Iverson, Meylan, Reeder, Seidel, Sites, Taggart, Tilley, and Wake, 2001 "2000", Herpetol. Circ., 29: 28; Tilley, Highton, and Wake, 2012, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 39: 30; Highton, Bonett, and Jockusch, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 32).

Georgia Red-backed Salamander (Plethodon cinereus polycentratus [no longer recognized]: Conant, 1958, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am.: 230; Conant, 1975, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am., Ed. 2: 273).

Distribution

Widely disjunct populations: central Louisiana; the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma; central and southeastern Missouri (excluding the boot heel); southeastern Tennessee, southwestern North Carolina, and west-central Georgia and adjacent eastern Alabama, USA; one old record from Fern Lake, Nacogdoches County, East Texas, USA, but not recollected there in over 70 years.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: United States of America, United States of America - Alabama, United States of America - Arkansas, United States of America - Georgia, United States of America - Louisiana, United States of America - Missouri, United States of America - North Carolina, United States of America - Oklahoma, United States of America - Tennessee, United States of America - Texas

Endemic: United States of America

Comment

In the Plethodon cinereus group of Highton and Larson, 1979, Syst. Zool., 28: 579–599. See accounts by Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 395–397, and Highton, 1986, Cat. Am. Amph. Rept., 394: 1–2. Dixon, 2000, Amph. Rept. Texas, Ed. 2: 58, discussed the old Texas record. Beamer and Lannoo, 2005, in Lannoo (ed.), Amph. Declines: 838–840, provided a detailed account that summarized the biology and conservation literature. Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 389, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map. Newman and Austin, 2015, PLoS One, 10(7: e0130131): 1–19, and Thesing, Noyes, Starkey, and Shepard, 2016, Evol. Ecol., 30: 89–104, reported on Pleistocene climatic fluxuations and complex phylogeographic structure within the species and among the five geographic isolates. Shew and Holt, 2018, Herpetol. Rev., 49: 281, provided the second record from Alabama, USA, from DeKalb County. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 891–893, provided an account summarizing systematics (enumerating at least five unnamed species in the complex) morphology, life history, population status, and distribution (including a polygon map).

External links:

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For access to general information see Wikipedia
For additional sources of general information from other websites search Google
For access to relevant technical literature search Google Scholar
For images search CalPhoto Images and Google Images
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