This species inhabits a wide range of ecological conditions: tall grass prairie, moist pine woodland, flood plain forest, oak woodland, dense hardwood forest, and intensely farmed areas. Adults are usually found underground, under rocks, leaves, logs, in crayfish burrows, etc. Breeding sites vary, and include forest ponds, temporary pools, ditches, spring-fed pools, and slow upper portions of streams. Breeding occurs in ponds or other lentic habitats, where small clumps of eggs, or occasionally single eggs (Kraus and Petranka 1989), are attached to vegetation or detritus in exposed sites. This species sometimes breeds in streams (recorded in Kentucky and Indiana) and sometimes lay eggs cryptically as in Ambystoma barbouri. It has a free-living larval stage. It seems able to cope with habitat modifications.

This species occurs on Pelee Island in Ontario, Canada, and in the United States of America from the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and western Alabama, north to eastern Nebraska, southern Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, southern Michigan, and Ohio (Conant and Collins 1991).

Conservation Actions
This species occurs in a large number of protected areas in the United States. It also occurs in The Mosquito Point Woods that is within the Canadian Provincial Park System’s Fish Point Nature Reserve. 

Conservation Needed
Necessary conservation measures include protection of bottom-land forest habitat that includes vernal ponds (Petranka 1998). 

Research Needed
Research on its population size and distribution, and population monitoring, are needed.