Desmognathus monticola Dunn, 1916

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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

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

Desmognathus monticola Dunn, 1916, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 29: 73. Holotype: USNM 38313, by original designation. Type locality: "Elk Lodge Lake, near Brevard, [Transylvania County,] North Carolina; altitude about 3000 feet", USA.

Desmognathus monticola monticola — Hoffman, 1951, J. Elisha Mitchell Sci. Soc., 67: 251.

Desmognathus monticola jeffersoni Hoffman, 1951, J. Elisha Mitchell Sci. Soc., 67: 250. Holotype: USNM 126891, by original designation. Type locality: "Saddle Hollow on Jarman's Mountain, 2 miles west of Crozet, Albemarle County, Virginia (elevation 1600 feet)", USA.

Desmognathus (Desmognathus) monticola — Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2012, Alytes, 28: 144. See comment under Desmognathus regarding the status of the subgenus.

English Names

Seal Salamander (Desmognathus monticola: Bishop, 1943, Handb. Salamanders: 205; Schmidt, 1953, Check List N. Am. Amph. Rept., Ed. 6: 30; Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 174; Conant, 1975, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am., Ed. 2: 265; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 5; 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: 16; 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: 25; Powell, Conant, and Collins, 2016, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. North Am., 4th ed.: 47; Highton, Bonett, and Jockusch, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 26).

Blue Ridge Seal Salamander (Desmognathus monticola jeffersoni: Schmidt, 1953, Check List N. Am. Amph. Rept., Ed. 6: 30).

Virginia Seal Salamander (Desmognathus monticola jeffersoni: Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 174; Conant, 1975, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am., Ed. 2: 266; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 5).

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

Appalachian Seal Salamander (Desmognathus monticola monticola: Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 174; Conant, 1975, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am., Ed. 2: 266; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 5).

Distribution

Western Pennsylvania and western Maryland south along the Appalachian highlands through West Virginia, western Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, extreme western South Carolina, northwestern Georgia, to southwestern Alabama, USA. A seemingly introduced population in northwestern Arkansas (see comment); introduced population in extreme southwestern Missouri (Benton County), USA.

Comment

Before Grobman, 1945, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 58: 40, this species was commonly referred to as Desmognathus phoca. Beamer and Lamb, 2008, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 47: 143v153, discussed a population of Desmognathus conanti that had previously been confused with Desmognathus monticola in the Red Hills of Alabama. Kozak, Larson, Bonett, and Harmon, 2005, Evolution, 59: 2000–2016, provided a molecular phylogenetics study that suggested two species under this name. Bonett, Kozak, Vieites, Bare, Wooten, and Trauth, 2007, BMC Ecol., 7(7): 1–11, discussed phylogeography and a seemingly introduced population in the Arkansas Ozarks. Matson, Pfingsten, Davic, and Pucci, 2010, Herpetol. Rev., 41: 17–18, rejected the record by Graziano and Reid, 2006, J. Kansas Herpetol., 17: 6, for southern Ohio as based on misidentified Desmognathus fuscus. See account by Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 187–192. See comment under Desmognathus fuscus regarding the nomenclature of the species name. Camp and Tilley, 2005, in Lannoo (ed.), Amph. Declines: 713–716, provided an account containing a detailed summary of the literature and range. Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 429, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map. Altig and McDiarmid, 2015, Handb. Larval Amph. US and Canada: 104–105, provided an account of larval morphology. Bush, Guzy, Halloran, Swartwout, Kross, and Willson, 2017, Copeia, 2017: 678–688, reported on an introduced population in Benton County, extreme southwestern Missouri, USA, on Spavinaw Creek.

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For additional information see AmphibiaWeb report
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For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.

Amphibian Species of the World 6.0, an Online Reference

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