North American Southern Toad Habitats Are Peopled, Sandy and Woody

Summary: North American Southern toad habitats are peopled, sandy and woody from Virginia southward through Florida and from Florida westward into Louisiana.

southern toad (Anaxyrus terrestris): USGS National Wetlands Research Center/Jeromi Hefner, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI)

North American Southern toad habitats are peopled, sandy and woody from Virginia southward through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida and from Florida westward through Alabama and Mississippi and into Louisiana.

The Bufonidae (from Latin būfō, “toad” and Greek ειδής, “-like” via Latin -idæ) true-toads family member’s common name bespeaks braving southeastern panhandle, peninsular and plain habitats. Southern toads carry the accepted species scientific name Bufo terrestris (from Latin būfō, “toad” and terrestris, “earthly”) and the anticipated Anaxyrus terrestris (from Doric ϝάναξ, “king”). Scientific descriptions in 1789 by France-born zoologist Abbé Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre (1752-Sep. 20, 1804) of la grenouille de terre (“the frog from earth”) decide taxonomic designations.

Southern toad 10-year life cycles expect daytime burrows; mixed forests; night-lit structures; oak scrublands; pinewoods; sandy, well-drained soils; and semi-permanent and temporary ditches, ponds and pools.

Predatory giant water bugs and black racer, eastern ribbon, garter, hognose, indigo and water snakes frustrate February through May breeding-season months in southern toad life cycles.

Physically and sexually mature two- to three-year-old females and males go to breeding sites in the shallow waters of semi-permanent and temporary ditches, ponds and pools. Mature and metamorphosed toads head from late-winter through late-spring, mating-season homes to friable- (from Latin friō, “I crumble” and -bilis, “-able” via friābilis), sandy-soiled, wilderness-urban interfaces. They nightly itinerate, for insects investigating artificial-, outdoor-illuminated business, governmental, residential inhabitancies and natural, sky glow-illuminated woods, from daytime burrows that they individually install and inhabit.

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

Two long streams keep 3,000-some eggs in semi-permanent and temporary ditches, ponds and pools in four Atlantic, one Atlantic and Gulf and three Gulf coastal states.

North American southern toads live as gill-breathing, herbivorous (from Latin herba, “grass” and vorō, “I devour”) tadpoles and, within one to two months, as metamorphosed toadlets. Metamorphosing from mature tadpoles into juvenile, physically and sexually immature toadlets mandates manifesting minimum 7- to 10-millimeter- (0.3- to 0.4-inch-) long bodies as one- to two-month-olds. Algae, aquatic vegetation and carrion nourish southern toad tadpoles even as juvenile and mature toads need ants, bees, beetles, cockroaches, earwigs, fireflies, mole crickets and snails.

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

Club-knotted heads presenting ridges between and behind both eyes and one- to two-plus warts within dark, upper-body spots sometimes, sometimes not protect them from predatory collectors.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 1.625- to 4.375-inch (4.1275- to 11.27-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. Adults retain gold-rimmed, knob-surrounded dark eyes and spotted, warty backs and reveal chunky, dry, hefty, short-legged, squat bodies that revert to black when cold and wet. Fast-pulsed, 4- to 8-second, high-pitched, semi-melodic, shrill advertisement calls sound dissonantly loud up close even as anti-contact release calls from low-pitched, vibrating mid-sections sound gratingly chirpy.

Shrilly trilling, spotted, warty brown-gray-red bodies with knobby, troublesome parotoid glands touching cranial crests and with black cold-wet transformations thrive in North American southern toad habitats.

range map for southern toad (Anaxyrus terrestris): 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:

Elongated, enlarged parotoid glands behind ears and cranial crests terminating at the rear in pronounced knobs characterize southern toads (Anaxyrus terrestris); Picayune Strand State Forest, Collier County, southwestern Florida: USGS National Wetlands Research Center/Jeromi Hefner, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) @ https://armi.usgs.gov/gallery/result.php?search=Anaxyrus+terrestris

range map for southern toad (Anaxyrus terrestris): 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:

Bonnaterre, Pierre Joseph, Abbé. 1789. "La G.[Grenouille] de Terre. R. terrestris." Tableau Encyclopédique et Méthodique des Trois Règnes de la Nature. Erpétologie: 8. Paris, France: Chez Panckoucke, MDCCLXXXIX.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39194236

Catesby, Mark. 1754. "Rana Terrestris. The Land Frog. Grénouille de Terre." The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands: Containing the Figures of Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, Insects and Plants: Particularly the Forest-Trees, Shrubs, and Other Plants, Not Hitherto Described, or Very Incorrectly Figured by Authors. Vol. II: 69, T. 69 (opposite page 68). London, England: C. Marsh and T. Wilcox, MDCCLIV.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/13414329

Dickerson, Mary C. 1906. "The Green Frog Rana clamitans Latreille." The Frog Book; North American Toads and Frogs With a Study of the Habits and Life Histories of Those of the Northeastern States: 89-91; Color Plate IV. New York NY: Doubleday, Page & Company.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1184015
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/frogbooknorthame01dick#page/89/mode/1up

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

Frost, Darrel. "Anaxyrus terrestris (Bonnaterre, 1789)." American Museum of Natural History > Our Research > Vertebrate Zoology > Herpetology > Amphibians Species of the World Database.
Available @ http://research.amnh.org/vz/herpetology/amphibia/index.php//Amphibia/Anura/Bufonidae/Anaxyrus/Anaxyrus-terrestris

Gill, Theodore. Biographical Memoir of John Edwards Holbrook, 1794-1871. Read Before th National Academy of Sciences, April 22, 1903.
Available via NASOnline (National Academy of Sciences) @ http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/holbrook-j-e.pdf

Holbrook, John Edwards, M.D. 1836. "Bufo clamosus. -- Schneider. Plate X." North American Herpetology; Or, A Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States. Vol. I: 79-81. Philadelphia PA: J. Dobson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4075439

"The 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map." The National Gardening Association > Gardening Tools > Learning Library USDA Hardiness Zone > USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map.
Available @ https://garden.org/nga/zipzone/2012/