Tylototriton wenxianensis Fei, Ye, and Yang, 1984

Class: Amphibia > Order: Caudata > Family: Salamandridae > Subfamily: Pleurodelinae > Genus: Tylototriton > Species: Tylototriton wenxianensis

Tylototriton asperrimus wenxianensis Fei, Ye, and Yang, 1984, Acta Zool. Sinica, 30: 89. Holotype: CIB 638164, by original designation. Type locality: "Wenxian [= Wen County], Gansu [Province], alt. 946 m", China.

Tylototriton asperrimus pingwuensis Deng and Yu, 1984, Acta Herpetol. Sinica, Chengdu, N.S.,, 3 (2): 75. Holotype: KIZ 74005, by original designation. Type locality: "Duiwoliang, Pingwu, Sichuan, alt. 1400 m", China. Synonymy by Ye, Fei, and Hu, 1993, Rare and Economic Amph. China: 80, following Zhao, Hu, Jiang, and Yang, 1988, Studies on Chinese Salamanders: 63, who considered it likely synonymous.

Pleurodeles (Tylototrion) asperrimus wenxianensis — Risch, 1985, J. Bengal Nat. Hist. Soc., N.S.,, 4: 142.

Echinotriton asperrimus wenxianensis — Zhao and Adler, 1993, Herpetol. China: 112. 1

Tylototriton wenxianensis — Ye, Fei, and Hu, 1993, Rare and Economic Amph. China: 80.

Tylototriton (Yaotriton) wenxianensis — Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2009, Alytes, 26: 68.

Tylototriton wenxianensis wenxianensis — Chen, Wang, and Tao, 2010, Acta Zootaxon. Sinica, 35: 666; by implication.

Yaotriton wenxianensis — Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2012, Colored Atlas Chinese Amph. Distr.: 94; Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021, Megataxa, 5: 408.

Common Names

Wenxian Knobby Salamander (Fei, 1999, Atlas Amph. China: 42).

Wenxian Knobby Newt (Fei and Ye, 2001, Color Handbook Amph. Sichuan: 96).

Wenxian Crocodile Newt (Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 289).

文县疣螈 (Chinese: Wang, Ren, Chen, Lyu, Guo, Jiang, Chen, Li, Guo, Wang, and Che, 2020, Biodiversity Sci., 28: Appendix 1, 2).

Distribution

Chongqing (Fengjie, Wenzhou, and Yunyang), Gansu (Wenxian), Guizhou (Dafang, Leishan, Suiyang, and Zunyi), and Sichuan (Jiange, Leishan, Pingwu, Qingchuan, and Wangcang), China, 940 to 1400 m elevation. See comment. 

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: China, People's Republic of

Endemic: China, People's Republic of

Comment

See comments under Tylototriton. See accounts by Ye, Fei, and Hu, 1993, Rare and Economic Amph. China 81, and Fei, 1999, Atlas Amph. China: 42. Fei and Ye, 2001, Color Handbook Amph. Sichuan: 96, provided a brief account and illustration. In the Tylototriton asperrimus group of Fei, Ye, Huang, Jiang, and Xie, 2005, in Fei et al. (eds.), Illust. Key Chinese Amph.: 42 (although they only addressed Chinese species). Fei, Hu, Ye, and Huang, 2006, Fauna Sinica, Amph. 1: 265-268. Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 187, provided a brief account, photograph, and map. See photograph, map, description of geographic range and habitat, and conservation status in Stuart, Hoffmann, Chanson, Cox, Berridge, Ramani, and Young, 2008, Threatened Amph. World: 607. Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2010, Colored Atlas of Chinese Amph.: 74-75, provided a brief account including photographs of specimens and habitat. Fei, Ye, and Jiang, 2012, Colored Atlas Chinese Amph. Distr.: 94–95, provided an account, photographs, and a map. Sparreboom, 2014, Salamanders Old World: 380–381, reviewed the biology, characteristics, distribution, reproduction, and conservation of the species. Fei and Ye, 2016, Amph. China, 1: 306–308, provided an account (as Yaotriton wenxianensis), photographs, and range map. See Yao and Gong, 2012, Amph. Rept. Gansu: 26–27, who provided a brief account and photograph, as Echinotriton asperrimus. Bernardes, Le, Nguyen, Pham, Pham, Nguyen, Rödder, Bonkowski, and Ziegler, 2020, ZooKeys, 935: 121–164, provided a range map, treating the populations from northern Guangxi, central Guizhou, Chonquing and Hubei, China as Tylototriton cf. wenxianensis, implying a species complex. In the Tylototriton (Yaotriton) wenxianensis species group of Poyarkov, Nguyen, and Arkhipov, 2021, Taprobanica, 10: 4–22, who discussed phylogenetics. In the Tylototriton asperrimus group of Lyu, Wang, Zeng, Zhou, Qi, Wan, Li, and Wang, 2021, Vert. Zool., Senckenberg, 71: 697–710, who discussed phylogenetics. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 289–291, provided an account, summarizing systematics, life history, population status, and distribution (including a polygon map). Li, Xiao, Zhao, Wu, Jin, Yan, and Liao, 2025, Biology, 14(614): 1–12, reported the species from, and its habitat preference in, Tangjiahe National Nature Reserve, in the Minshan Mountain range, northern Sichuan, China. Le, Ninh, Vu, Pham, Ziegler, and Nguyen, 2025, ZooKeys, 1265: 129–150, reported on the  species' phylogenetic placement and suggested that the previous report of the mtDNA of this species (Han, Jiang, and Zhang, 2016, MtDNA, Part A, 27: 2901–2902) is actually of Tylototriton maolanensis. 

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