North American Southern Chorus Frog Habitats Are Mixed and Pine Woods

Summary: North American southern chorus frog habitats are mixed and pine woods from Virginia through Florida and Florida through Mississippi coastal plains.

southern chorus frog (Pseudacris nigrita): U.S. Geological Survey/photo by Jeromi Hefner, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI)

North American southern chorus frog habitats are mixed and pine woods in the coastal plain from Virginia south through Florida and from Florida west through Mississippi and perhaps just over Mississippi-Louisian borders.

Southern chorus frogs bear their common name for their biogeographies in the southern Atlantic through the Gulf coastal United States and for their breeding-season advertisement calls. They carry the species name Pseudacris nigrita (false locust [that is] black, from Greek ψευδής, “false” and ἀκρίς, “cricket, grasshopper, locust” and from Latin nigrita, “black”). Scientific descriptions designate them taxonomically as allied members of the Hylidae (from Greek ύλη, “forest” via Latin Hylas and -ειδής, “-like” via Latin -idae) tree-frog family.

The Anura (from Greek ἀν-, “not” and οὐρά, “tail” via ανοὐρά) amphibian order member expects flooded ditches, ponds and pools in mixed woodlands and pine flatwoods.

December or January through April or May elsewhere and June through July during heavy-rain breeding peaks in southern Florida furnish southern chorus frogs with breeding-season months.

Physically and sexually mature 8- to 14-month-old females generate attachable, irregular, small egg masses after getting together with physically and sexually mature 8- to 14-month-old males. Subsurface leaves and stems of aquatic plants hold the egg masses of southern chorus frogs in shallow waters, where they hatch into fishlet-like, gill-breathing, swimming tadpoles. Their body lengths, at 9 to 15 millimeters (0.3 to 0.6 inches), impel 50-day-old tadpoles into physically and sexually immature intervals as metamorphosized southern chorus frogs.

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis fungal disease, fertilizer runoff, globally warmed climate change, nonnative species, toxic pesticides, trematode-induced deformities and ultraviolet radiation jeopardize North American southern chorus frog habitats.

Such “large-scale disturbances” (Beane 2009: page 140) as extensive habitat-altering prairie wetland-draining near south Florida’s limestone sinkholes and as extended drought kill southern chorus frogs there.

North American southern chorus frogs live in acidic soils around, and in acidic waters of, limestone sinkholes that link with amphibian-loving wet prairies in south Florida. Predacious aquatic insects and tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) larvae menace southern chorus tadpoles throughout their range even as owls and snakes menace immature and mature frogs. Adults, unlike algae-, debris-, diatom-nourished tadpoles, need ants, beetles, caddisflies, craneflies, crickets, flies, grasshoppers, mites, mosquitoes, moths, pillbugs, sowbugs, spiders, springtails, stinkbugs, termites, wasps and worms.

North American southern chorus frog habitats offer season-coldest temperature ranges, north to southward, from 0 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 17.77 to minus 1.11 degrees Celsius).

Cryptic coloration and secretive behavior in flooded, grassy clumps around and in semi-permanent and temporary ditches, ponds and pools protect procreation-prompted males during annual breeding-season months.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 0.75- to 1.75-inch (1.91- to 4.44-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. Brown-, gray- or tan-bodied adults reveal black-, irregular-, large-spotted backs and broken-, white-lined upper lips in Florida and broken-, triple-striped backs with white-lined upper lips elsewhere. Clicking, creaking, rising-pitched, second-long, slow-paced crrreeeeek trills similarize overlapping, slow-paced cajun chorus frog crrreeeeeek advertisements and sound slower-pulsed than overlapping, rising-inflected upland chorus frog crrreeeek calls.

Brown-gray-green bodies with banded sides, cream-colored bellies, lined lips and striped backs trill throughout the southeastern coastal plain’s grass-teeming, pine-thronged North American southern chorus frog habitats.

range map for southern chorus frog (Pseudacris nigrita): National Amphibian Atlas, Public Domain, via U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

southern chorus frog (Pseudacris nigrita); Florida Panhandle: U.S. Geological Survey/photo by Jeromi Hefner, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) @ https://armi.usgs.gov/gallery/index.php

range map for southern chorus frog (Pseudacris nigrita): National Amphibian Atlas, Public Domain, via U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center @ https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov:8080/mapserver/naa/

For further information:

Aardema, J.; S. Beam; J. Boner; J. Bussone; C. Ewart; I. Kaplan; K. Kiefer; S. Lindsay; E. Merrill; W. Moretz; J. Roberts; E. Rockwell; M. Reott; J. Willson; A. Pickens; W. Guthrie; A. Young; Y. Kornilev; W. Anderson; G. Connette; E. Eskew; E. Teague; M. Thomas; and A. Tutterow. "Southern Chorus Frog." Herps of NC > Amphibians and Reptiles of North Carolina > Frogs & Toads > Tree Frogs and Relatives (Family Hylidae).
Available @ https://herpsofnc.org/american-toad/

Beane, Jeffrey C.; Alvin L. Braswell; Joseph C. Mitchell; William M. Palmer; and Julian R. Harrison III. 2010. "Southern Chorus Frog (Pseudacris nigrita)." Page 140. In: Amphibians and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virginia. With contributions by Bernard S. Martof and Joseph R. Bailey. Second Edition, Revised and Updated. Chapel Hill NC: The University of North Carolina.

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Elliott, Lang; Carl Gerhardt; and Carlos Davidson. 2009. "Southern Chorus Frog." Pages 96-99. The Frogs and Toads of North America: A Comprehensive Guide to Their Identification, Behavior and Calls. Boston MA; New York NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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