NC Physiographic Region(s): eastern piedmont and coastal plain

River Basin(s): lower Yadkin-Pee Dee (Sandhills region), Cape Fear (eastern piedmont and coastal plain), Neuse, Tar-Pamlico, Roanoke (eastern piedmont and coastal plain), Lumber, Waccamaw, Northeast Cape Fear, White Oak, Chowan, Pasquotank

Adult Habitat: “burrows (primary burrower); often found in ponds or streams in the spring season” (Hobbs Jr. 1989); “Primary burrower along water courses and in low swampy areas.  Adults, and especially juveniles, also collected in epigean bodies of water” (Bouchard 1974); under logs in riffle; “can be excavated almost anywhere where water table is near surface; lives as primary burrower” (NHP ICAS 1999)

Juvenile Habitat: burrows and surface waters along edges in cover

Reproductive Season: “amplexus in fall; spring brooding” (NHP ICAS 1999)

Species associates: many

Conservation status:  not protected

Identification references: Cooper 1999, Hobbs Jr. 1989, Hobbs Jr. 1991

Taxonomic Description:

body shape: carapace vaulted
coloration:  reddish-brown or grayish with bright or pastel shades of red and blue along margins and crevices
spines: lacking marginal, cephalic, and cervical spines
rostrum: wide and squarish, somewhat long; concave; small pinched acumen
areola: linear (or nearly so), or obliterated
chelae: robust; strong dorsolatitudinal ridges; having broad shallow curved excision in proximal half of movable dactyl; large tubercle about midway on mesial margin of fixed finger
other characteristics: eyes well developed
form I male gonopod: corneous central projection somewhat rounded and not bearing subapical notch; central projection longer than mesial process; mesial process inflated and bulbous at base, tapering distally