It is endemic to the eastern United States, where it is only known from the southern Appalachian Mountains.

[1][2] It is known from extreme western North Carolina and southeastern Tennessee.

This is the more common of the two species of "blackbelly salamander" known from Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

[3][4] This species and the other blackbelly salamander from the range (the Pisgah black-bellied salamander, D. mavrokoilus) are the first new vertebrate taxa to be discovered in the park's all-taxa biodiversity inventory.

The specific epithet, gvnigeusgwotli, roughly translates to "black belly" in the Cherokee language.