Rhyacotritonidae Tihen, 1958

Class: Amphibia > Order: Caudata > Family: Rhyacotritonidae

Rhyacotritoninae Tihen, 1958, Bull. Florida State Mus., Biol. Sci., 3: 3. Type genus: Rhyacotriton Dunn, 1920. Proposed as a subfamily of the Ambystomatidae.

Rhyacotritonidae — Good and Wake, 1992, Univ. California Publ. Zool., 126: 13.

Rhyacotritonoidea — Dubois, 2005, Alytes, 23: 20. Superfamily.

English Names

Olympic Salamanders (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 34).

Torrent Salamanders (Halliday and Adler, 2002, New Encyclop. Rept. Amph.: 52; Stebbins, 2003, Field Guide W. Rept. Amph., Ed. 3: 161).

Seep Salamanders (Stebbins, 2003, Field Guide W. Rept. Amph., Ed. 3: 161).

Distribution

Northwestern USA.

Comment

Reviewed by Anderson, 1968, Cat. Am. Amph. Rept., 68: 1-2, prior to revision by Good and Wake, 1992, Univ. California Publ. Zool., 126. Placed in its own subfamily within Ambystomatidae by Tihen, 1958, Bull. Florida State Mus., Biol. Sci., 3, but was subsequently suggested to be distantly related to ambystomatines by Edwards, 1976, J. Morphol., 148, Sever, 1992, J. Morphol., 212, and Larson and Dimmick, 1993, Herpetol. Monogr., 7, who considered it to be a family distinct from Ambystomatidae. Wiens, Bonett, and Chippindale, 2005, Syst. Biol., 54, considered, on the basis of their parsimony analysis, that Rhyacotritonidae is the sister-taxon of Amphiumidae + Plethodontidae, as did Wiens, Bonett, and Chippindale, 2005, Syst. Biol., 54: 91-100, Frost, Grant, Faivovich, Bain, Haas, Haddad, de Sá, Channing, Wilkinson, Donnellan, Raxworthy, Campbell, Blotto, Moler, Drewes, Nussbaum, Lynch, Green, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 297: 115. Good and Wake, 1992, Univ. California Publ. Zool., 126: 1-91 and Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543-583 (see comment in Amphibia record). See comment under Ambystomatidae. See accounts by See Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 434-443. Vitt and Caldwell, 2009, Herpetology, 3rd Ed.: 429, provided a general taxonomic account and map as part of a much more general and extensive overview of biology. Zhang and Wake, 2009, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 53: 492-508, reported on molecular phylogenetics of salamanders based on mtDNA and provided an estimate of time since origin of the salamander families. Zheng, Peng, Kuro-o, and Zeng, 2011, Mol. Biol. Evol., 28: 2521-2535, reported on the estimated time of origin of this taxon. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148, 3148: 39-55, briefly reviewed the taxonomic history of this taxon. Powell, Collins, and Hooper, 2011, Key Herpetofauna U.S. & Canada, 2nd Ed.: 8, provided a key to the species. Chen, Wang, Liu, Xie, and Jiang, 2011, Curr. Zool., Chengdu, 57: 785805, reported on a tree of 11 protein-coding mtDNA genes that suggested (albeit with low support) that Rhyacosirenidae is the sister taxon of Ambystomatidae.

Contained taxa

Rhyacotriton Dunn, 1920 (4 sp.)

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