North American Bullfrog Habitats Are Permanent Ponds and Slow Streams

Summary: North American bullfrog habitats are permanent ponds and slow streams in southeastern Canada and all but North Dakota in the contiguous United States.

American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana; Lithobates catesbeianus); Big Thicket National Preserve, Orange County, southeastern Texas: USGS National Wetlands Research Center/Brad Michael "Bones" Glorioso, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI

North American bullfrog habitats are permanent ponds and slow streams in southernmost Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick and Nova Scota in southeastern Canada and all but North Dakota in the contiguous United States.

Bullfrogs bear their common name for breeding males bellowing bull-like, jug-o-rum advertisement calls and for membership in the large-limbed, moist-skinned, smooth-skinned, strong-legged, web-footed Ranidae true-frog family. They carry the accepted scientific name Rana catesbeianus (from Latin rāna, “frog” and the anticipated genus renaming Lithobates catesbeianus (from Greek λίθος [“stone”] and βάτης [“treader”]). Taxonomic designations defer to scientific descriptions in 1802 by George Kearsley Shaw (Dec. 10, 1751-July 22, 1813 and to Mark Catesby (March 24, 1682/1683-Dec. 23, 1749).

Bullfrog life cycles expect large, permanent lakes and ponds and slow-moving streams with spring and summer, side-by-side shoreline territories established by larger males for encountering mates.

Life cycles with 7- to 10-year life expectancies annually furnish physically and sexually mature 1- to 2-year-old males and 2- to 3-year-old females with breeding-season months.

Female North American bullfrogs go through, and get together in, permanent waterscape territories that the greatest-sized males garner and guard during May through July breeding-season months. Such territories hold the one to three clutches, each with 3,000 to 20,000, 0.05- to 0.07-inch (1.2- to 1.7-millimeter) diameter, surface-floating, black-and-white eggs, of mated females. Five-day-long egg intervals initiate fish-like, gill-breathing, herbivorous (from Latin herba, “grass” and vorō, “I devour”), swimming tadpoles impelled, within 1 to 1-plus years, into metamorphosed intervals.

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis fungal disease, climate change from global warming, fertilizer runoff, nonnative species, toxic pesticides, trematode fluke-induced deformities and ultraviolet radiation jeopardize North American bullfrog habitats.

Sometimes their biology kindles their metamorphosis, from tadpoles maximally 5 to 6 inches (125 to 130 millimeters) long, into leaping, legged, lung-breathing, tail-less Anuran order froglets.

North American bullfrogs in the four southeastern Canadian provinces and throughout the northern United States sometimes live in tadpole stages longer than 2.4 to 4 years. Crayfish, dragonfly nymphs and giant waterbugs menace tadpoles even as crows, garter and hognosed snakes, gopher frogs, marine toads, raccoons and raptors menace toadlets and toads. Tadpoles need algae, organic debris, plant tissue and suspended matter even as bats, beetles, crayfish, insects, lizards, mosquitoes, newts, scorpions, snails, snakes and spiders nourish adults.

North American bullfrog habitats offer their season's coldest temperature ranges, northward to southward, from minus 45 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.78 to 4.4 degrees Celsius).

Frog collectors for pet stores and research laboratories, frog and trophy-part hunters and frog-leg collectors for grocery store, grocery retail and restaurant industries predatorize American bullfrogs.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 3.5- to 8-inch (8.89- to 20.32-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. The blunt-snouted, green-bodied, green-headed adults reveal dark, gold-rimmed eyes; dark-marked, white-yellow abdomens; and hind-foot webbing removed from the last joint of each hind foot's longest toe. Advertisement, aggression and fear respectively sound like bass-pitched, loud, resonant jug-o-rum, rumm-rumm-rumm and stuttering ruuuummm-ruuuummm calls, like abrupt spit-like phphoot! calls and like loud eeek! vocalizations.

North American bullfrog habitats transmit bull-like, jug-o-rum bellows from big-eardrum, blunt-snouted, dark-eyed and gold-rimmed, green-headed, brown-gray-rust-patterned or all-green, large bodies with dark-marked or plain yellow-white abdomens.

range map for American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana; Lithobates catesbeianus): U.S. Geological Survey Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (NPWRC), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana; Lithobates catesbeianus); Big Thicket National Preserve, Orange County, southeastern Texas: USGS National Wetlands Research Center/Brad Michael "Bones" Glorioso, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) @ https://armi.usgs.gov/gallery/result.php?search=Lithobates+catesbeianus

range map for American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana; Lithobates catesbeianus): U.S. Geological Survey Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (NPWRC), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bullfrog_range.png

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