Taricha Gray, 1850

Class: Amphibia > Order: Caudata > Family: Salamandridae > Subfamily: Pleurodelinae > Genus: Taricha
4 species

Taricha Gray, 1850, Cat. Spec. Amph. Coll. Brit. Mus., Batr. Grad.: 25. Type species: Triton torosa Rathke IN Eschscholtz, 1833, by monotypy.

Paleotaricha Van Frank, 1955, Breviora, 45: 4. Type species: Paleotaricha oligocenica Frank, 1955, by original designation. Synonymy by Tihen, 1974, J. Herpetol., 8: 211–218.

Twittya Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2009, Alytes, 26: 58. Type species: Triturus rivularis Twitty, 1935, by original designation. Coined as a subgenus of Notophthalmus. Subgenus rejected by Fouquette and Dubois, 2014, Checklist N.A. Amph. Rept.: 249. 

English Names

Pacific Newts (Conant, Cagle, Goin, Lowe, Neill, Netting, Schmidt, Shaw, Stebbins, and Bogert, 1956, Copeia, 1956: 175; Collins, Huheey, Knight, and Smith, 1978, Herpetol. Circ., 7: 9; Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 33; Liner, 1994, Herpetol. Circ., 23: 15; Collins, 1997, Herpetol. Circ., 25: 10; Stebbins, 2003, Field Guide W. Rept. Amph., Ed. 3: 164; Liner and Casas-Andreu, 2008, Herpetol. Circ., 38: 35; Collins and Taggart, 2009, Standard Common Curr. Sci. Names N. Am. Amph. Turtles Rept. Crocodil., ed. 6: 15; Tilley, Highton, and Wake, 2012, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 39: 31; Highton, Bonett, and Jockusch, 2017, in Crother (ed.), Herpetol. Circ., 43: 34).

Roughskin Newts (Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 36).

Distribution

The Pacific coastal region from southern Alaska to southern California, USA.

Comment

See accounts by Nussbaum and Brodie, 1981, Cat. Am. Amph. Rept., 271: 1–2, and Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 462–478. Hedgecock and Ayala, 1974, Copeia, 1974: 738–747, reported on genetic divergence among the three species. Riemer, 1958, Univ. California Publ. Zool., 56: iii, 310–390, discussed geographic variation within and relationships among the species. Weisrock, Papenfuss, Macey, Litvinchuk, Polymeni, Uğurtaş, Zhao, Jowkar, and Larson, 2006, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 41: 855–857, on the basis of DNA sequence evidence suggested that Taricha is the sister taxon of Notophthalmus. See account by Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 462–478. Raffaëlli, 2007, Les Urodèles du Monde: 141–143, provided brief accounts, figures, and maps. Powell, Collins, and Hooper, 2011, Key Herpetofauna U.S. & Canada, 2nd Ed.: 12–13, provided a key to the species. Raffaëlli, 2022, Salamanders & Newts of the World: 332–337, provided species accounts, summarizing systematics, life history, population status, and distribution (including a polygon map).

Contained taxa (4 sp.):

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