Desmognathus welteri Barbour, 1950

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

Desmognathus fuscus welteri Barbour, 1950, Copeia, 1950: 277. Holotype: USNM 129312, by original designation. Type locality: "at an elevation of 2300 feet above sea level, at Looney Creek, near Lynch, Harlan County, Kentucky", USA.

Desmognathus welteriRubenstein, 1971, Am. Midl. Nat., 85: 329.

Desmognathus (Desmognathus) welteriDubois and Raffaëlli, 2012, Alytes, 28: 144. See comment under Desmognathus regarding status of subgenus. 

English Names

Black Mountain Salamander (Schmidt, 1953, Check List N. Am. Amph. Rept., Ed. 6: 29; Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 174; 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.: 52; Highton, Bonett, and Jockusch, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 26).

Black Mountain Dusky Salamander (Conant, 1975, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. Cent. N. Am., Ed. 2: 264; Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 995).

Distribution

Extreme eastern Kentucky, adjacent Virginia, and extreme southern West Virginia, southwest to east-central Tennessee, USA.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: United States of America, United States of America - Kentucky, United States of America - Tennessee, United States of America - Virginia, United States of America - West Virginia

Endemic: United States of America

Comment

See accounts by Juterbock, 1984, J. Herpetol., 18: 240–255, and Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 211–213. Juterbock and Felix, 2005, in Lannoo (ed.), Amph. Declines: 728–730, provided an account containing a detailed summary of the literature and range. Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 428, provided a brief account, photograph, and range map. Altig and McDiarmid, 2015, Handb. Larval Amph. US and Canada: 108, provided an account of larval morphology. Pyron, O'Connell, Lemmon, Lemmon, and Beamer, 2022, Ecol. Evol., 12 (2: e8574): 1–38, provided molecular evidence that Desmognathus welteri is genalogically cohesive. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 995, provided an account summarizing systematics, morphology, life history, population status, and distribution (including a polygon map). Camp, Felix, and Wooten, 2022, Amphibia-Reptilia, 43: 133–140, reported on morphological homoplasy among semi-aquatic species (Desmognathus welteri, Desmognathus folkertsi, northern "quadramaculatus" (now Desmgnathus kanawha), and southern "quadramaculatus" (now Desmognathus amphileucus).   

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