Already possessing more salamander species than any other state in the country with 63, North Carolina has just added one more to make it 64. The aptly named Carolina Sandhills Salamander (Eurycea arenicola) is found in association with springs, seepages and small blackwater streams of the Sandhills region of North Carolina.
The Carolina Sandhills Salamander was previously lumped in as an unusual population of the Southern Two-lined Salamander (Eurycea cirrigera), but researchers at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences applied next generation sequencing technology to show that the new species differs genetically in both the mitochondrial and nuclear genome from other species of two-lined salamanders.