84 Jeffrey C. Beane 



and Coastal Plain populations are not disjunct, should not be ignored. 

 Although Lee et al. (1982) stated that "absence of records from the 

 piedmont is certainly not an artifact of collecting," there have probably 

 been few serious efforts to collect C. cristata in the North Carolina 

 Piedmont, other than the recent trapping efforts at the Wake County 

 site. Moreover, specific attempts to collect Condylura in the Mountains 

 and Coastal Plain have seldom if ever proven successful, and Clark et 

 al. (1985) commented on the difficulty encountered in trapping the 

 species. Most available specimens for which the method of collection 

 is known were found dead on roads or otherwise accidentally encountered. 

 Even in the Mountains where the species may be fairly common, 

 there are still several counties for which specimens have not been 

 reported. Much of the Piedmont, particularly the western part, has 

 been largely overlooked or ignored by biologists, and its fauna remains 

 poorly documented. Small, fossorial or otherwise secretive vertebrates 

 may long elude detection in any region. As examples, the eastern 

 tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) was first discovered in the 

 Piedmont in Wake County by me in 1982 (NCSM files) after that area 

 had been heavily collected by herpetologists for nearly a century; and 

 the bog turtle (Clemmys muhlenbergii) was discovered in three new 

 Piedmont counties during 1992-1993 (Beane 1993). Although some 

 areas, such as the Raleigh vicinity, have been heavily collected by 

 mammalogists and other biologists for more than a century, little 

 effort has been specifically aimed at star-nosed mole trapping. 



The North Carolina Piedmont has been heavily altered for agriculture 

 and urbanization — probably more so overall than either the Mountains 

 or the Coastal Plain, and many Piedmont wetlands have been drained 

 or otherwise destroyed in the process. It is possible that wetlands 

 alteration or other human activities may have eliminated the star- 

 nosed mole from many areas of the Piedmont in recent times. If 

 populations of this mole do occur throughout the Piedmont of North 

 Carolina, it is likely that they exist as scattered relicts (either Pleistocene 

 relicts or more recent anthropogenic relicts) and at low densities. It is 

 hoped that this paper will help stimulate biologists working in North 

 Carolina (and other southern states) to make every reasonable effort 

 to collect evidence of Condylura, and to photograph or collect specimens 

 wherever they are encountered, especially at undocumented localities. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS—^ am grateful to Allen C. Boynton, Elmer 

 E. Brown, Kurt A. Buhlmann, Dennis W. Herman, Elizabeth McGhee, 

 Thomas M. Padgett, Philip B. Spivey, R. Wayne Van Devender, W. 

 David Webster, and David K. Woodward for their assistance in locating 



