endemic to a single nation

United States

Origin: Native

Regularity: Regularly occurring

Currently: Present

Confidence: Confident

Type of Residency: Year-round

United States

Rounded National Status Rank: N3 - Vulnerable

Rounded Global Status Rank: T3 - Vulnerable

Comments: Exhibits low range-wide allozyme diversity and high between-population mtDNA variation (Routman 1993). A mtDNA phylogeny by Routman et al. (1994) indicated that "the two subspecies of hellbenders are paraphyletic with respect to one another. Hellbenders found in the southern Ozarks (C. C. BISHOPI) are either most closely related to populations of C. A. ALLEGANIENSIS inhabiting the Tennessee River drainage or are so divergent that phylogenetic affinities are undetectable. Extremely low levels of divergence among mtDNA haplotypes found in populations from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and the northern Missouri Ozarks suggest a recent, probably post-Pleistocene, invasion of this region from a refugium in one of these areas." Hence, recognition of the nominal subspecies appears to be unwarranted.