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

Bolitoglossa rufescens (Cope, 1869)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Caudata > Family: Plethodontidae > Subfamily: Hemidactyliinae > Genus: Bolitoglossa > Species: Bolitoglossa rufescens

Oedipus rufescens Cope, 1869, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 21: 104. Holotype: USNM 6886, by original designation; lost according to Dunn, 1926, Salamanders Fam. Plethodontidae: 418. Not mentioned in USNM type list by Cochran, 1961, Bull. U.S. Natl. Mus., 220: 1-291, so presumed lost. Lost prior to 1926 according to Tighe, 2022, Smithson. Contrib. Zool., 654: 42, briefly discussed the current location of paratypes. . Type locality: "Orizava" (= Orizaba), Veracruz, Mexico.

Spelerpes (Oedipus) rufescens — Peters, 1873, Monatsber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Berlin, 1873: 617.

Geotriton rufescens — Smith, 1877, Tailed Amph.: 76.

Spelerpes rufescens — Boulenger, 1882, Cat. Batr. Grad. Batr. Apoda Coll. Brit. Mus., Ed. 2: 71.

Oedipus rufescens — Dunn, 1926, Salamanders Fam. Plethodontidae: 418.

Bolitoglossa rufescens — Taylor, 1941, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 27: 145.

Palmatotriton rufescens — Smith, 1945, Ward’s Nat. Sci. Bull., 19: 4.

Bolitoglossa rufescens — Smith and Taylor, 1948, Bull. U.S. Natl. Mus., 194: 23.

Bolitoglossa (Nanotriton) rufescens — Parra-Olea, García-París, and Wake, 2004, Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 81: 335.

English Names

Northern Banana Salamander (Liner, 1994, Herpetol. Circ., 23: 11; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 30; Lee, 2000, Field Guide Amph. Rept. Maya World: 56; Liner and Casas-Andreu, 2008, Herpetol. Circ., 38: 29).

Rufescent Salamander (Lee, 1996, Amph. Rept. Yucatan Peninsula: 43).

Common Dwarf Salamander (Campbell, 1998, Amph. Rept. N. Guatemala Yucatan Belize: 39).

Orizaba Banana Salamander (Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 666).

Distribution

Extreme eastern San Luis Potosí (Mexico) south through Veracruz and adjacent Puebla, and, provisionally east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Chiapas and Guatemala to Belize and northwestern Honduras, along the Atlantic slopes (see comment).

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico

Comment

Formerly in the Bolitoglossa rufescens group which now constitutes the subgenus Nanotriton according to Parra-Olea, García-París, and Wake, 2004, Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 81: 335. Populations near Catemaco, Veracruz, Mexico, were referred to this species (rather than Bolitoglossa occidentalis) by Larson, 1983, Herpetologica, 39: 97. See also Elias, 1984, Contrib. Sci. Nat. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co., 348: 11; Lee, 1996, Amph. Rept. Yucatan Peninsula: 43–44; Campbell, 1998, Amph. Rept. N. Guatemala Yucatan Belize: 39–40; and Lee, 2000, Field Guide Amph. Rept. Maya World: 56-57. McCranie and Wilson, 2002, Amph. Honduras: 129–131, suggested that nominal Bolitoglossa rufescens from Honduras is not conspecific with Bolitoglossa rufescens from farther north. McCranie, 2007, Herpetol. Rev., 38: 36, summarized the departmental distribution in Honduras. Campbell, Smith, Streicher, Acevedo, and Brodie, 2010, Misc. Publ. Mus. Zool. Univ. Michigan, 200: 40, confirmed the distinctivenes of this species from Bolitoglossa occidentalis, named the Guatemalan population southeast of the Rio Motagua (as Bolitoglossa nympha), and noted that the populations east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec were unlikely to be conspecific with Bolitoglossa rufescens (sensu stricto). The Sierra Juarez population in Oaxaca was recently named as Bolitoglossa chinanteca. Rovito, Parra-Olea, Vázquez-Almazán, Luna-Reyes, and Wake, 2012, BMC Evol. Biol., 12(255): 1–16, provided molecular evidence of even more unnamed lineages. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 40–69, compared this species with others from Central America and provided a map and photograph. Raffaëlli, 2013, Urodeles du Monde, 2nd ed.: 313–314, provided a brief account, photograph, and map. Hess, Itgen, Firneno, Nifong, and Townsend, 2017, J. Zool. Syst. Evol. Res., 55: 150–155, on the basis of mtDNA, suggested that several identifiable, and largely allopatric populations currently identified as Bolitoglossa rufescens complex: 1) a population including the type locality (Orizaba) in Veracruz and presumably extending north into San Luis Potosi and into montane eastern Oaxaca and western Chiapas, Mexico; 2) a population from the Tuxtlas of Veracruz, Mexico; 3) a montane "Guatemala" clade of found from montane Huehuetenango and Alta Verapaz; 4) a population from the Sierra de Omoa in northwestern Honduras; and 5) a population from the vicinity of Catemaco, Veracruz, Mexico. See account by Cázares-Hernández, Molohua Tzitzihua, Méndez Quiahua, Quiahua Colotl, Temoxtle Marquez, Rodriguez Merino, and Apale Pacheco, 2018, Tlaconetes: 1–92, for photos, habitat, life history, and conservation status. Luría-Manzano, Ramírez-Valverde, and Juárez-Ortiz, 2021, Herpetol. Rev., 52: 341, reported a specimen from the municipality of San Sebastián Tlacotepec, Puebla, Mexico. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 666–670, provided an account summarizing systematics, life history, population status, and distribution (including a polygon map).

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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
For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.