Habitat
Originally, the CMS was probably restricted to red spruce forests of West Virginia's higher mountains. Most of these forests were cut down by 1920, and so several populations today occur in mixed deciduous forests that have replaced red spruce stands. These include yellow birch, American beech, sugar maple, striped maple and eastern hemlock trees. The salamander’s occurrence, however, is not dependent upon any particular type of vegetation, but is often associated with boulder fields, rock outcrops, or steep, shaded ravines lined with a dense growth of rhododendron. It is more abundant adjacent to large emergent rocks where soil and litter are more moist and cooler than the surrounding hillsides. It may be that they were protected in these refugia (emergent rocks) when the original forests were cut and in some areas burned. Typically, they are found where the ground cover consists of bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, etc. -- especially the liverwort Bazzania) and an abundance of leaf litter, fallen logs and sticks.
Read more about this topic: Cheat Mountain Salamander
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