Fourche Mountain Salamander Plethodon fourchensis  Duncan & Highton, 1979
Image © Suzanne L. Collins, 2001
Taxonomic Comments:
Powell, Collins and Hooper (1998 A Key to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Continental United States and Canada. University Press of Kansas, Lawremce. vi + 131 pp.) recognized this evolutionary lineage as a distinct species. Duellman and Sweet (1999 pages 31-109 In Duellman, W. E. (editor), Patterns of Distribution of Amphibians. A Global Perspective. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. viii + 633 pp.) recognized this evolutionary lineage as a distinct species. Highton and Peabody (2000 Geographic Protein Variation and Speciation in Salamanders of the Plethodon jordani and Plethodon glutinosus complexes in the Southern Appalachian Mountains with the Description of Four New Species. Pp. 31-93. In Bruce, Jaeger and Houck (editors). The Biology of Plethodontid Salamanders. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York. xiii + 485 pp.) continued to recognize this salamander as a distinct species. Shepard & Burbrink (2009 Molecular Ecology 18: 2243–2262) demonstrated that this single species of salamander may soon be four. Shepard, Donald B., Kelly J. Irwin, and Frank T. Burbrink (2011. Morphological Differentiation in Ouachita Mountain Endemic Salamanders. Herpetologica 67(4): 355-368), using mtDNA, confirmed four distinct evolutionary lineages within this species, but have not yet named them.