Climbing salamanders is the common name for plethodontid (lungless) salamanders of the genus ''Aneides''. It contains 10 species native to

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

, distributed between the

Pacific Coast Pacific coast may be used to reference any coastline that borders the Pacific Ocean. Geography Americas Countries on the western side of the Americas have a Pacific coast as their western or southwestern border, except for Panama, where the Pac ...

(7 species), Sacramento Mountains (1 species), and Appalachian Mountains (2 species). As their common name suggests, most of these species have prehensile tails and are quite mobile in trees.

Taxonomy

The green salamander (''A. aeneus'') and the Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander (''A. caryaensis'') are now considered to belong to their own

subgenus In biology, a subgenus (plural: subgenera) is a taxonomic rank directly below genus. In the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, a subgeneric name can be used independently or included in a species name, in parentheses, placed between t ...

'' Castaneides'', which diverged from the ''

Aneides hardii The Sacramento Mountain salamander (''Aneides hardii'') is a species of salamander in the family Plethodontidae. It is endemic to mountainous regions of New Mexico in the United States. Its natural habitat is temperate forests where it is t ...

'' lineage between 27.2 and 32.3 million years ago, during the

Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...

. ''Castaneides'' contains significant

cryptic diversity In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each oth ...

and may contain more as-of-yet undescribed species. All other western ''Aneides'' including ''A. hardii'' are considered ''Aneides

sensu stricto ''Sensu'' is a Latin word meaning "in the sense of". It is used in a number of fields including biology, geology, linguistics, semiotics, and law. Commonly it refers to how strictly or loosely an expression is used in describing any particular co ...

'', and belong to the subgenus of the same name.

Distribution

All ten known species in this genus inhabit mountain ecosystems in

, and all but three are found primarily in the mountains of the west coast of the United States, Baja California and British Columbia. Of the three non-western species, the

Sacramento Mountain salamander The Sacramento Mountain salamander (''Aneides hardii'') is a species of salamander in the family Plethodontidae. It is endemic to mountainous regions of New Mexico in the United States. Its natural habitat is temperate forests where it is threate ...

(''A. hardii'') is endemic to a mountainous region in New Mexico, while the two currently-described ''Castaneides'' species are endemic to the Appalachian Mountains of eastern United States.

Species

Ten species in two subgenera are currently assigned to this genus: '' Nota bene'': A binomial authority in parentheses indicates that the species was originally described in a genus other than ''Aneides''.

References

External links

Caudata Culture Species Database - Plethodontidae
Amphibian genera Amphibians of North America Extant Cenozoic first appearances Taxa named by Spencer Fullerton Baird {{Plethodontidae-stub

Taxonomy

Distribution

Species

References

Further reading

External links