As their common name suggests, most of these species have prehensile tails and are quite mobile in trees.

The green salamander (A. aeneus) and the Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander (A. caryaensis) are now considered to belong to their own subgenus Castaneides, which diverged from the Aneides hardii lineage between 27.2 and 32.3 million years ago, during the Oligocene.

Castaneides contains significant cryptic diversity and may contain more as-of-yet undescribed species.

[3] All ten known species in this genus inhabit mountain ecosystems in North America, and all but three are found primarily in the mountains of the west coast of the United States, Baja California and British Columbia.

[2] Ten species in two subgenera are currently assigned to this genus:[1][3] (Patton et al., 2019) (Baird, 1851) Nota bene: A binomial authority in parentheses indicates that the species was originally described in a genus other than Aneides.