Salamandra salmonea Storer

Pyron, R. Alexander & Beamer, David A., 2022, A nomenclatural and taxonomic review of the salamanders (Urodela) from Holbrook’s North American Herpetology, Zootaxa 5134 (2), pp. 151-196 : 157-159

Salamandra salmonea Storer in Holbrook 1838b:101, pl. 22

[= S. porphyritica Green, 1827 ]

Holbrook included several names that were unnecessarily erected for or improperly allocated to species with which he and other workers were incompletely familiar. Chief among these is this account by David Humphreys Storer (1804–1891) of Salamandra salmonea , an obvious junior subjective synonym of S. porphyritica Green, 1827 as subsequently designated by Baird (1850), a species of which neither Storer nor Holbrook seemed to be aware. This is the Spring Salamander, now placed in Gyrinophilus Cope, 1869 (= G. porphyriticus ). Curiously, Holbrook (1842e) included accounts for both names without realizing their synonymy, even though he commissioned J. Queen to adapt Green’s (1827) original illustration by T. R. Peale in the account for Triton porphyriticus ( Holbrook 1842e:83, pl. 28). Peale’s drawing clearly shows the diagnostic canthus rostralis of this species (see Pyron and Beamer 2020) but Queen’s copy of it does not. As this feature is highlighted in Holbrook (1838b) ’s illustration of S. salmonea by T. W. Hill (reprinted in Holbrook 1842e, pl. 8), the lapse is notable.

Holbrook (1838b) initially noted the existence of only two specimens; one of Storer’s collected by Dr. Binney in the Green Mountains of Vermont (see Storer 1840), and another of unknown provenance from “the neighbourhood of Danvers, in Massachusetts.” Holbrook stated that he has never seen the animal alive, “but can answer for the correctness of the drawing and colouring through my friend Dr. Storer. ” Storer (1840) implied that he alone kept the specimen described in his notes, and thus Holbrook presumably never saw it alive. Thus, we are led to conclude that the specimen illustrated by T.W. Hill is from Danvers, in preservative. This is bolstered by the awkward position of the legs, suggestive of a fixed animal which Holbrook received after preservation. The account in the second edition ( Holbrook 1842e:33) later noted specimens from Essex County, New York (from De Kay) and the mountains of South Carolina (from M. Cabanis), but curiously did not mention the Massachusetts specimen again. We were unable to locate any extant specimens of Gyrinophilus associated with Holbrook .

Schmidt (1953) restricted the type locality to “ Vermont,” which is supported by Storer (1840) ’s confirmation that the specimen described in Holbrook (1838b) was Dr. Binney’s from Vermont, contra Adler (1976) who suggested it was the Massachusetts specimen. As noted above, Storer (1840) seems to imply that he himself kept the specimen alive for a year, where it “appeared perfectly healthy, eating voraciously of flies.” Curiously, Holbrook (1838b) states that it was Dr. Binney who “kept it alive for nearly a year, during which time it was never seen to take any food.” Holbrook (1842e) then stated it was “ Dr. Binney, who kept it alive for nearly a year, feeding it on flies, which it devoured very greedily.” The description and illustration are otherwise unchanged from the 1st to the 2nd edition.