Olympic Salamander

About the Olympic Salamander

The Olympic torrent salamander (Rhyacotriton olympicus) is a morphologically distinctive, highly derived species of salamander in the family Rhyacotritonidae endemic to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, where it lives in clear, cold mountain streams. While it is small, it tends to be the largest Rhyacotriton species.

It has a very complicated taxonomic history, originally being described in 1917 by Helen Thompson Gaige as Ranodon olympicus, due to proposed similarity to R. sibericus. It was later given its own genus, Rhyacotriton, by Emmett Reid Dunn in 1920, but was placed within the family Ambystomatidae, thought to be more closely related to the genus Ambystoma than Ranodon; later, it was given its own subfamily, Rhyacotritoninae, as a close relative of Dicamptodon in Dicamptodontinae by Joseph Anton Tihen. Afterward, it was placed into Dicamptodontinae by Philip Joe Regal in 1966, which was elevated to its own family, Dicamptodontidae, by James L. Edwards in 1976. It was ultimately given its own family by David A. Good and David Burton Wake in 1992, being considered a monotypic genus until they and Gloria Z. Wurst recognized that it likely included... Wikipedia →