THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY


Amphibia    Caudata    Plethodontidae  

Georgia Blind Salamander
Eurycea wallacei (Carr, 1939)
yoor-EE-see-uh — WAL-uh-see-eye

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

Range maps are based on curated specimens and provided gratis by CNAH.
(Created by Travis W. Taggart; Version: 2025.10.13.15.31.31)
Download GeoJSON polygon range file: - 0.13 MB

Province/State Distribution:
United States: Florida Georgia

Taxonomic Etymology:
Named for a collector or contributor.
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.
wallacei — Patronym, honoring Howard Keefer Wallace (1907–?), who led the Department of Zoology at the University of Florida specializing in the taxonomy and distribution of US spiders.

First instance(s) of published English names:
Georgia Blind Salamander (Haideotriton wallacei: 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:
1939 Carr, Archie., Jr. Haideotriton wallacei, a new subterranean salamander from Georgia. Occasional Papers of the Boston Society of Natural History 8:333–336
1967 Brandon, Ronald A. Haideotriton and H. wallacei. Catalogue of American Amphibians and Reptiles (39):1-2
1993 Arnold, Steven J., Nancy L. Reagan, and Paul A. Verrell. Reproductive isolation and speciation in plethodontid salamanders. Herpetologica 49(2):216-228
2010 Kozak, Kenneth H. and John J. Wiens. Accelerated rates of climatic-niche evolution underlie rapid species diversification. Ecology Letters 13:1378-1389

THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY — Accessed: Friday 05 December 2025 16:57 CT