Arkansas Herpetological Atlas 2019
This species is represented by 76 records from 21 sources: 53 museum (
), 3 literature (
), 0 research (
), and 12 observation (
), with 8 additional Trauth et al. (2004) locality points remaining unsourced (
). It has been museum vouchered for 30 of 75 counties (), with 5 additional counties having other forms of reported occurrence (). Years of collection range from 1934 to present.
This secretive and rarely encountered species has spotty occurrences throughout the central South Central Plains and along the Arkansas Valley. A cluster of records come from the eastern Ozark Highlands in northeastern Arkansas. There are isolated records from Crowley’s Ridge at Village Creek State Park, Cross County, and historically in 1935 from southwest of Paragould, Greene County. A questionable historical record from the vicinity of Fayetteville, Washington County (UAFMC 0068-0735-0830 from 1935), may be valid, given credence from nearby records from southeastern Delaware County, Oklahoma, (one from 1959 and two undated; Sievert and Taggart, 2020) and an anecdotal in-hand observation of a large specimen from just west of Huntsville, Madison County (K. G. Roberts, pers. obs., 1980s). It is likely this species has a much broader range in Arkansas than is currently established, presumably across the western Ouachita Mountains (corroborated by a record from Le Flore County, Oklahoma; Sievert and Taggart, 2020) and at least historically along the entirety of Crowley’s Ridge (corroborated by a record dated prior to 1966 from Dunklin County, Missouri; Daniel and Edmond, 2020).
