36 Richard Highton 



geographic and ecological interactions as well as the details of the color 

 morph character displacement in that area. 



No morphological differences in standard taxonomic characters used to 

 distinguish species group taxa in the genus Plethodon have been detected in 

 this pair of sibling species, but this does not preclude the possibility that a 

 multivariate morphometric analysis might detect differential characters. 

 Such a study would be especially interesting because of the very large 

 amount of genetic divergence between P. dorsalis and P. websten. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. — I wish to thank all those persons who helped 

 with the field work, including several who provided information on 

 localities, as well as those who aided in the laboratory work, especially 

 Allan Larson and the late T. Preston Webster. The work was supported 

 by the National Science Foundation (grants DEB 76-10583 and GB- 

 37320). 



LITERATURE CITED 



Ayala, Francisco J. 1975. Genetic differentiation during the speciation process. 



Evol. Biol. 5:1-78. 

 Highton, Richard. 1962. Revision of North American salamanders of the genus 



Plethodon. Bull. Fla. State Mus. Biol. Sci. 6:235-367. 

 1972. Distributional interactions among eastern North American 



salamanders of the genus Plethodon. pp. 139-188 in Holt, P.C. (ed.). The 



distributional history of the biota of the southern Appalachians, Part III: 



Vertebrates. Res. Div. Monogr. 4, Va. Polytech. Inst. State Univ., 



Blacksburg. 306 pp. 

 Larson, Allan, and R. Highton. 1978. Geographic protein variation and 



divergence in the salamanders of the Plethodon wellen group (Amphibia: 



Plethodontidae). Syst. Zool. 27:431-448. 

 Mount, Robert H. 1975. The reptiles and amphibians of Alabama. Auburn Univ. 



Agric. Exp. Stn, Auburn. 347 pp. 



Accepted 27 November 1978 



