Endangered
Berry Cave salamander
Gyrinophilus gulolineatus
The Berry Cave salamander is a salamander in the family Plethodontidae, endemic to the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of eastern Tennessee in the United States.
Appearance
This salamander resembles the Tennessee cave salamander (Gyrinophilus palleucus) but grows to a larger size, has a more spatulate snout, a broader head and more pigmentation. The premaxilla bones at the tip of the snout are completely divided in adults of this species while they are not in the Tennessee cave salamander.
Range and habitat
This salamander is known from caves in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of eastern Tennessee. Its range is smaller than that of the spring salamander (Gyrinophilus porphyriticus) and is completely inside it, and the two species sometimes inhabit the same cave systems. The Berry Cave salamander is a salamander in the family Plethodontidae, endemic to the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of eastern Tennessee in the United States. Its natural habitat is inland karsts where it lives underground.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Salamanders hide under logs, in seeps, or in caves. They do not commute across a dry valley.
Eggs and damp skin make amphibians quick to vanish from a drained wetland or a forest stripped of litter.
In crisis
It is threatened by habitat loss. This easement makes access possible only for individuals granted research permits. Berry Cave salamander is listed as endangered by the state of Tennessee, that legally protects it from harassment and capture by individuals not possessing permits.
Salamanders disappear when seeps are capped, caves are disturbed, or a pathogen moves through a mountain range.
Berry Cave salamander is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Berry Cave salamander, Wikidata item Q1883471. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
