Critically Endangered
Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander
Aneides caryaensis
Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander is a salamander in the family Plethodontidae (order Caudata) — Aneides caryaensis, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to United States.
Appearance
Aside from genetic differences, it can be physically distinguished from A. Aeneus by a tail length (TL) that is longer than its snout to vent length (SVL), as well as its smaller and less-connected lichen-like patches of bright to yellowish-green pigment on a dark body, as opposed to the larger and more-connected patches of green on A. Aeneus. The Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander is a lungless salamander in the family Plethodontidae.
Range and habitat
This species is restricted to the Hickory Nut Gorge, a 20,000-acre, 14-mile long canyon in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Due to this comparatively very small distribution, it is considered a microendemic species. As with A. Aeneus, it inhabits crevices & hollows of rock outcrops and woody & arboreal habitats within cove forests, although it primarily depends on the former.
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
Salamanders disappear when seeps are capped, caves are disturbed, or a pathogen moves through a mountain range.
Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander is Critically 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 Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander, Wikidata item Q105806628. 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.
