THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY

Amphibia    Caudata    Plethodontidae  

Southern Two-lined Salamander
Eurycea cirrigera (Green, 1831)
yoor-EE-see-uh — sir-ih-JER-uh

SSAR 9th Edition Comments:
 There are no current SSAR comments for this taxon.

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Occurrences:; 16,364 Total; 7,832 Museum; 8,532 Other
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Province/State Distribution:
United States: Alabama Florida Georgia Illinois Indiana Kentucky Louisiana Maryland Michigan Mississippi North Carolina Ohio South Carolina Tennessee Virginia West Virginia

Taxonomic Etymology:
Named for its cirri.
Eurycea — Rafinesque (1822) intentionally used a mythological-sounding name, but its specific Greek meaning or derivation was not disclosed. So, while modern etymologists may connect Eurycea to Eurydice or Greek roots (eurys “broad”), Rafinesque himself treated it as a classical name without a defined origin.
cirrigera — Latin cirrus = “tendril” or “filament” + -gero = “to bear”
→ “Bearing cirri,” referring to filamentous structures near the nostrils in males.

First instance(s) of published English names:
Green's Triton (Spelerpes bilineatus: Yarrow, Henry C. 1882. Check list of North American Reptilia and Batrachia with catalogue of specimens in U. S. National Museum. Bulletin of the United States National Museum (24):1-249); Two-striped Salamander (Spelerpes bilineatus: Davis, N. S., and Frank L. Rice. 1883. List of Batrachia and Reptilia of Illinois. Bulletin of the Chicago Academy of Sciences 1(3):25–32); Striped Salamander (Spelerpes bilineatus: Brimley, Clement S. 1896. Batrachia found at Raleigh, N. C. The American Naturalist 30():500-501); Southern Two-lined Salamander (Eurycea bislineata cirrigera: Schmidt, Karl P. 1953. A Check List of North American Amphibians and Reptiles. 6th Edition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. 280pp.);

Taxon Links:

  
Catalog of American Amphibians and Reptiles
  
Amphibian Species of the World
  
NatureServe
  
iNaturalist
  
GenBank
  
USGS - Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database

Selected References:
1831 Green, J. Description of two new species of salamander. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 6:253–255
1991 Collins, Joseph T. Amphibians and reptiles in the upper Mississippi river valley: Systematic and distributional problems. Journal of the Tennessee Academy of Science 66(4):149-152
1993 Arnold, Steven J., Nancy L. Reagan, and Paul A. Verrell. Reproductive isolation and speciation in plethodontid salamanders. Herpetologica 49(2):216-228
1999 Sever, David M. Eurycea cirrigera. Catalogue of American Amphibians and Reptiles (684):1-6
2010 Kozak, Kenneth H. and John J. Wiens. Accelerated rates of climatic-niche evolution underlie rapid species diversification. Ecology Letter 13:1378-1389

THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY — Accessed: Monday 27 July 2026 16:40 CT