Streamside Salamander

The streamside salamander is a mole salamander of the American Midwest, found chiefly in central Kentucky, southwestern Ohio, and southeastern Indiana, with an isolated population in Livingston County, Kentucky. It has a dark black body with lichen like gray and brown markings, a small head, a short rounded snout, and a short flaccid body, with 14 to 15 costal grooves and teeth with distinct cusp shapes. Adults live underground and beneath rocks or leaves in deciduous forest, and the species is believed to have diverged from the pond breeding small mouth salamander during the late Pleistocene as a warming climate eliminated the ponds it once used, forcing it to adapt to streams instead. It is assessed as near threatened, with a population above 10,000, threatened mainly by forest conversion to pasture and residential land and by pesticide pollution that can kill large numbers of larvae.