Eurycea braggi – E. nerea – E. spelaea
Grotto Salamander complex

Cave-dweller. Color a ghostly white. Eyes small, beady, and underneath fused eyelids. Species account on iNaturalist

Species: E. braggi (Southern Grotto Salamander), E. nerea (Northern Grotto Salamander), and E. spelaea (Western Grotto Salamander)

US Fish & Wildlife Service
Regulated

Arkansas Herpetological Atlas 2019

This species complex is represented by 1,114 records from 38 sources: 968 museum (), 49 literature (), 4 research (), and 90 observation (), with 3 additional Trauth et al. (2004) locality points remaining unsourced (). It has been museum vouchered for 16 of 75 counties (), with 1 additional counties having other forms of reported occurrence (). Years of collection range from 1900 to 2018.

This species complex (Phillips et al., 2017) inhabits karst topographies of the Ozark Highlands and northern portions of the Boston Mountains. While range boundaries are not clearly established, the upper White River may act to divide E. spelaea () and E. braggi () in northwest Arkansas. Division of E. braggi and N. nerea () from the Arkansas-Missouri border region is not clearly delimited, although the White River may play some part. A questionable observation record from Johnson County (ANHC AAAAD16010*CVB171 from 2004) is tentatively plotted. There are no known field characters to distinguish between these species.