Hoffman and Highton successfully located Hubricht’s collection site about 0.9 miles south of the Black Rock Hill Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and after collecting and examining 24 of their own specimens, confirmed their suspicions that this was a new species. The two prepared a manuscript describing the salamander, which they designated P. aureolus, and planned to submit the account for publication by December of 1956. However, P. aureolus was never to officially exist as the scientific name for the salamander discovered by Leslie Hubricht in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Shortly before Hoffman and Highton’s manuscript was submitted, Highton phoned Gordon Thurow, who was in the army at the time, and was stationed near where he lived. Richard invited Gordon and his wife over for dinner at their home. During the phone conversation, Richard told Gordon that he had found Leslie Hubricht’s site along the Blue Ridge Parkway and that Gordon had misidentified the specimens Hubricht collected as P. nettingi. Richard also told Gordon that the specimens were of a new species and that he and Richard Hoffman were in the process of describing it. When Gordon and his wife came over for dinner, Richard showed Gordon the new specimens Hoffman and he had collected. During the visit, Gordon never mentioned that right after he received the phone call from Richard Highton, he rushed to Hubricht’s collection site and collected some specimens for himself. He then swiftly submitted his own description of this new species, giving the Peaks of Otter salamander its official specific epithet of hubrichti. This less-than-honorable rush to be the first to name this new species, plus other similar events, caused Richard Hoffman, a budding Virginian herpetologist at the time, to look for another group of animals in the forests of Virginia that needed taxonomic work. He decided to work with millipedes. Distribution The Peaks of Otter salamander is endemic to a 19-km stretch along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Peaks of Otter area of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Bedford, Botetourt, and Rockbridge Counties of west-central Virginia. P. hubrichti occupies forest floor habitats and is generally found at elevations above 845 m. Distribution in allopatry When not in sympatry with the Eastern Red-backed salamander (P. cinerus), P. hubrichti surface-active salamander densities decreased with elevation. Reichenbach and Brophy performed a study between 2008 and 2010 on allopatric populations of P. hubrichti at elevations ranging from