This species inhabits muddy springs, slow floodplain streams, and swamps along slow streams; backwater ponds and marshes created by beaver activity. Non-larval forms usually occur beneath logs and rocks, in decaying vegetation, and in muddy stream-bank burrows. It occasionally disperses from wet muddy areas. It is secretive and sometimes difficult to detect. Eggs are attached separately to objects in water, such as undersides of leaves in quiet pools (Green and Pauley 1987).

This species occurs in the United States of America on the Coastal Plain and Piedmont of eastern Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, and in the Coastal Plain only of Maryland and southern New Jersey; west of the Appalachians, in eastern Tennessee, Kentucky, western West Virginia, western Virginia, and southern Ohio; and isolated subpopulations in east-central Mississippi and south-central Pennsylvania (Petranka 1998). It is predominately a lowland species, and is absent from the higher elevations of the Appalachian Mountains (Green et al. 2014). Records from southern Ohio and southwestern West Virginia south through Kentucky, central and eastern Tennessee, and North Carolina and Virginia west of the Eastern Continental (Appalachian) Divide and into extreme northern Georgia are now recognized as Pseudotriton diastictus (Frost 2021).

Conservation Actions In-Place
This species occurs in many protected areas. It is listed as Rare and on the Watch List in Maryland, as a Species of Concern in Louisiana and South Carolina, as Rare in Ohio and West Virginia, as Threatened in New Jersey, and as Endangered in Pennsylvania (Green et al. 2014).

In an effort to prevent the introduction of Bsal into the US, an Interim Rule of the Lacey Act has been enacted that bans the importation of 201 species of salamanders (USFWS 2016). Additionally, a temporary voluntary trade moratorium of imports of Asian salamander species that are known to carry the disease until such time as effective testing and treatment regimens can be developed and distributed has been recommended to all exporters, shippers, sellers and buyers by the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC). A North America Bsal Task Force has also been created, with working groups designed to address a variety of disease prevention and mitigation goals (North America Bsal Task Force 2021).

Conservation Needed
Continued and strengthened management of protected areas will be important for the conservation of this species.

Research Needed
Further research on this species' distribution, population size and trends is recommended.