A NEW SPECIES OF DESMOGNATHUS FROM THE EASTERN GULF COASTAL PLAIN

Abstract

This paper describes a new species of salamander, Desmognathus apalachicolae (Plethodontidae), from the Coastal Plain Physiographic Province of the southeastern United States. Its populations are distributed among deep, moist ravines south of the Fall Line in the Ochlockonee, Apalachicola-Flint-Chattahoochee, and upper Choctawhatchee river systems in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Desmognathus apalachicolae is allopatric with all other Desmognathus except in the southern half of its range where it is parapatric with D. auriculatus. Morphologically and electro- phoretically D. apalachicolae is most like southern Appalachian populations of D. ochrophaeus upstream in the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River along the Blue Ridge. The high percentage of disjunct Appalachian plants occurring in the ravines along the Coastal Plain reaches of the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers suggests that D. apalachicolae may have evolved from a D. ochrophaeus-like ancestor isolated in these ravines after a southward migration during the Pleistocene.