Three-lined Salamander

Eurycea guttolineata

Three-lined Salamander

TLSA

Status

The Three-lined Salamander is common throughout its range.

Description

Eurycea guttolineata is a slender, medium-sized (9–20 cm), tan to yellowish salamander with three black stripes, one middorsal stripe and two lateral stripes extending to the tip of its tail. This species has an extremely long tapering tail. (See remarks for subspecies information.)

Distribution

This species ranges from eastern Virginia southward through the Carolinas, Georgia, northern Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, extreme western Tennessee, and extreme southeastern Louisiana.

Habitat

Eurycea guttolineata inhabits river and creek bottoms (bottomland hardwoods), swamps, seepage areas at springs and streams, and the underside of rocks in small creeks. This species is sometimes found considerable distances from standing water but always in damp situations.

Special Requirements

This species requires bottomlands and damp streamside situations.

Breeding Habits

Breeding occurs in winter, with egg deposition taking place in early spring. The young transform in four to five months with sexual maturity apparently reached the following summer (Martof and others 1980).

Food Habits

This salamander’s diet includes small arthropods and annelids.

Management Suggestions

Preservation of river bottomlands from excessive clearing or impoundments is probably the only step necessary to maintain populations of this species.

Remarks

Whether this form should be recognized as a subspecies or treated as a full species is presently in dispute. According to Valentine (1962), Eurycea guttolineata intergrades with E. longicauda in northern Alabama and surrounding areas. However, in the Blue Ridge escarpment, the two forms are sympatric without evidence of intergradation (Ireland 1979). I follow Martof and others (1980) in recognizing Eurycea guttolineata as a distinct species.

Additional References

Conant and Collins 1991; Gordon 1953.