Eastern Spadefoot Toad

The temperature: 60 F. Partly cloudy. Slight breeze. Time: About 10:30 am. I am positive we interrupted this toad couple in amplexus, but oh well, the male gets to hang with several females over the spring mating season. Besides the position of the male, we can also tell him apart from the female because he is larger.
We found a whole bunch of these Spadefoots (Scaphiopus holbrookii) in a swamp across from the entrance of the Meeman Biological station in Shelby Forest State Park. Though this is a nocturnal animal, we still were able to find some in the water outside of their holes. The water was not very deep and it was full of aquatic vegetation, which is perfect for the female to lay strings of around 200 eggs in. Unlike true toads these eggs do not have a gelatinous capsule around them. They must hatch and the tadpoles metamorphose into adults before the temporary water hole they are in dries up. Hatching can take place in a few days and metamorphosis will take place in varying times depending on the available resources, intraspecific and interspecific competition, how fast the pond is drying up, and level of predation. As tadpoles, they eat the vegetation they were laid in. As toadlets and mature adults, they like to eat insects and worms as one might expect for an Anuran (frogs and toads). The eyes are really cool, though another way to tell a toad is a spadefoot is suggested by that name: they have a fingernail-like spade on each hind limb for digging their daytime burrows. The toads in this picture are on the dark side of the spectrum, while other individuals, perhaps in different areas, would be lighter with a more distinct gold stripe going back from each eye. Finally, for a toad, the skin is relatively smooth, though still with warts characteristic of all toads.
Michal Summers
University of Memphis,TN