S. Leopard Frog

Last Tuesday at the South Carolina Aquarium we saw many herps of different shapes and sizes, all of there were interesting and I hated to leave one out; but for this blog I wanted to take the time to talk about one in particular that stood out to me.  The Southern Leopard frog is the herp that drew the most interest from me not only because of it’s unique features, patterns, and colorations but also because I vaguely remember my high school’s biology class.  Seeing one of these slimy critters torn apart and pronged by dissecting tools.  I’ve always had an interest in frogs, I’ve even owned my fair share of Green Tree Frogs but seeing the Southern Leopard Frog up close, and actually “alive” brought back subtle memories in making me want to become biologist in the first place.

There are several other leopard frogs scattered throughout the US, three in fact all with their own unique variations.  You have the Northern Leopard, that resides throughout the temperate regions of North America and patched through the western parts of the United States, the Rio Grande Leopard distributed from Central Texas all the way down to the Neotropics, as far as Nicaragua.  The Plains Leopard Frog resides throughout the great plains of the United States.

Their lifecycle consist of the usual frogs lifecycle where certain environmental conditions leads to their fertility, such as rainfall, humidity, and temperature.  In a frogs perspective fertility periods are kicked into gear during heavy amounts of rain.  From an tadpole to a frog they develop from a fully aquatic lifestyle to a semi aquatic lifestyle.  Their clutch size can vary between the hundreds in masses submerged under debris.  In general their lifespan ranges around 2-3 years.  One of the key features I use whenever identifying one in the wild is of course the leopard like spots.   Between the Pickerel Frog, the Southern Leopard Frog’s stripes aren’t as big, whereas the Southern frog spots are more scattered out.  Between Southern Leopard and Northern Leopard frogs, one of the things that help me identify them it is that in the Southern variation, the stripes that follow behind it’s eyes aren’t as thick as the Northern.

These organisms face an unusual pressure to their survival due to the rise of climate, which could lead to a redistribution off their habitat.  Every decision we make that has an impact in their territory forces a change of dietary resource availability for many of the things they frogs eat or what eats them.  It’s very important especially in humid locations like South Carolina that we keep our frog population stable because of our growing mosquito crisis.  Many contractors or whoever handles the scheduled mosquito sprays are forced to emit pesticides that could upset our bee population.  This is an unfortunate alternative instead of letting nature naturally combat pest.