I was walking through the Francis Marion National Forest for a Plant Taxonomy lab when I found this little frog hopping through the tall grass.
I wouldn’t have seen it if it hadn’t been moving because it blended into the gray grass so well. We were coming from the wet shrub bog and back into the dry, grassy longleaf pine ecosystem when I spotted it. I couldn’t resist catching it to identify it and take cute pictures, of course.
Based on the relative size of the toe pads, I was able to narrow the identification down to Hylidae Hyla. The color and pattern as well as the dark stripe from the nose through the eye and down it’s side along with the yellow spots on the backside of the thighs indicated to me that this frog is the Hyla femoralis also known as the Pine woods treefrog. The Peterson field guide describes the habitat of Hyla femoralis as “pine flatwoods, savannahs, pine-oak forests, usually near bogs or ponds”. It makes perfect sense that I found this Pine woods treefrog where I did because it was right between a shrub bog and a longleaf pine forest.
I caught this frog with ease and it seemed to take nicely to me, as much as a wild animal can. It didn’t try to hop away at any point. When I tried to release it and nudge it off my hand, it hopped onto my other hand. I had to give it a couple gentle pushes to get it to finally hop off of me. It’s interactions like these that remind me why I want to work in the conservation biology field!
2 comments:
Nice find! What life stage do you think this individual was, based on its size?
Hello! This is very cute frog and seems very small. I really enjoyed how you explained how you narrowed down what type of frog by starting with its family and moving down to the genus and species.
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