Amphibians
Cheoah Bald Salamander
Plethodon cheoah · also called Cheoah Bald salamanders
High on a single stretch of the Nantahala Mountains, a small, lungless salamander lives its entire existence within a range so narrow that most herpetologists working in the wider southern Appalachians will never happen to cross paths with one.
Overview
The Cheoah Bald salamander, Plethodon cheoah, is a small, lungless woodland salamander confined to high-elevation forest habitat within a limited area of the Nantahala Mountains in western North Carolina. Its lungless respiration, direct terrestrial development, and extraordinarily narrow range make it one of the more recently recognised and geographically restricted salamanders in the diverse southern Appalachian radiation.
A single mountain, a single species
Few salamanders anywhere in North America are tied as tightly to one specific patch of mountain terrain as the Cheoah Bald salamander, whose entire known range fits within a small corner of a single Appalachian range.
Status
Least Concern — locally common across suitable high-elevation forest habitat within its very limited range in the Nantahala Mountains.
Cheoah Bald Salamander: common questions
How does the Cheoah Bald salamander breathe without lungs?
The Cheoah Bald salamander has no lungs at all, a trait shared by every member of the lungless salamander family, and instead absorbs oxygen directly through its moist skin and the lining of its mouth, which is why the species depends so heavily on consistently damp, high-elevation microhabitats.
Where does the Cheoah Bald salamander live?
This species is found only within a narrow high-elevation range centred on the Cheoah Bald area of the Nantahala Mountains in western North Carolina, making it one of the more geographically restricted woodland salamanders in North America.
Does the Cheoah Bald salamander have an aquatic larval stage like a frog?
No, the Cheoah Bald salamander lays its eggs in moist terrestrial sites such as rock crevices rather than in water, and it skips the aquatic larval stage entirely, with young hatching directly as fully formed miniature adults.
Why was the Cheoah Bald salamander only recently recognized as its own species?
It was formally described relatively recently as part of ongoing scientific work to untangle the remarkable diversity of closely related woodland salamanders across the southern Appalachians, a mountain region known for producing many narrowly distributed, genetically distinct salamander species.