My next target was the Big Levels Salamander, Plethodon sherando. This species was described in 2004, and superficially looks like a Redback; however, it is genetically distinct, and apparently has longer limbs than Redbacks do.

It took me several hours to reach where these salamanders are found, over a number of twisting, two-lane roads that hugged the valleys and climbed up into the mountains. I parked close to a stream that emptied into a fishing lake, and began checking under the rocks bordering the stream. I turned up several Twolined Salamanders, but nothing else; away from the stream margins, the soil was very dry here. It looked like this area hadn't had any rain for a while. When the stream played out I walked around the lake, looking for some seeps or any kind of wet spot where salamanders might be holed up, but came away empty-handed. This place was dry, dry, dry, and I was getting dried out and heated up in the afternoon sun.

I headed back to the vehicle, wondering what my next move was going to be. Should I try another spot further down the road, or move on to the next salamander? I was burning daylight as it was...back at the truck, I looked at a long section of thick log sitting in the weeds on the roadside. On arrival I had dismissed it as being to heavy for me to roll, but looking at it again on the other side of my lousy luck...what the heck, I'll give it a try. You can guess what was underneath - two, count 'em, two Plethodon sherando, sporting big legs and wonky genes. Had I rolled this log right off, I could have saved myself ninety minutes of work!

Not having a Redback handy for comparison, I couldn't hazard a guess as to how much longer the legs were on these two creatures. To my dismay, I accidentally deleted most of the pictures from this visit, but fortunately, a few shots of the creatures were saved.

I had to get going if I was going to have a chance at my third species, the Peaks of Otter Salamander, Plethodon hubrichti. Here was another small salamander with a range limited to a few mountains, in this case the Peaks of Otter region in central Virginia. I've always been intrigued by the name  - any salamander with 'Otter' in its name was a salamander I wanted to see. Back over the twisting two-lanes I went, then down the interstate for a while, then more two-lanes...all the while the late afternoon sky was filling with dark clouds. I pulled over into the parking area near a likely trail head, looked at the sky and tossed my poncho into my knapsack - it was a question of when and not if the rain was coming.

Lady luck, skill, mojo, fortunate happenstance, call it what you will, I had it right then, because under the first bit of wood I lifted, not a yard from the parking lot, was a Peaks of Otter Salamander. I was done; the day's trifecta was mine. This was another pretty species, with gold flecking on the dorsum against a dark background.  Plethodon hubrichti is closely related to the P. shenandoah I had seen earlier in the day, and to P. nettingi over in eastern West Virginia; apparently all shared a common, but now vanished ancestral form that was once widespread over the area. All three salamanders have slowly became genetically distinct, isolated on their mountaintops. I wondered if there were any more 'sky island' relict species still waiting to be discovered.

I walked up the trail as it began to sprinkle, looking for more examples, and found five more hubrichti within a hundred yards, and all under small logs and branches not much thicker than my arm.  The elevation here was plenty high, although I was not quite on top of the mountain, and not as high as my first excursion of the day.

Now the sprinkles turned into a downpour as the wall of rain reached me. This was a big system slowly moving through; it would rain all night and much of the next day, as it turned out. Time for me to finish the swing down through Virginia, down to northeastern Tennessee for the next day's work in the field.