North American Atlantic Coast Leopard Frog Habitats Are Weedy and Wet

Summary: North American Atlantic coast leopard frog habitats are weedy and wet meadows and marshes within the I-95 corridor from Connecticut through North Carolina.

Photographs of Rana kauffeldi sp. nov. holotype (YPM 13217) show live male (a) whole body, dorsolateral view (photograph by BRC Brian R. Curry) and (b) dorsal view (photograph by BZ Brian Zarate) and preserved male (a) dorsal view and (b) ventral view (photographs by GWC Gregory Watkins-Colwell); Jeremy A. Feinberg, Catherine E. Newman, Gregory J. Watkins-Colwell, Matthew D. Schlesinger, Brian Zarate, Brian R. Curry, H. Bradley Shaffer and Joanna Burger, "Cryptic Diversity in Metropolis: Confirmation of a New Leopard Frog Species (Anura: Ranidae) from New York City and Surrounding Atlantic Coast Regions," PLOS ONE, Oct. 29, 2014, Figure 2: Brian R. Curry, Gregory Watkins-Colwell, Brian Zarate, CC BY 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons

North American Atlantic coast leopard frog habitats are freshwater, open-canopied, shallow, slow-flowing, weedy and wet meadows and marshes with cattails, maples and reeds within the I-95 corridor from Connecticut through North Carolina.

Atlantic coast leopard frogs bear their common name for biogeographies based in Atlantic coastlines, leopard-like spots on their backs and legs; and Ranidae true-frogs family membership. The common name Kauffeld’s frog and the scientific name Rana kauffeldi (from Latin rāna, “frog” and kauffeldi) commemorate Carl Frederick Kauffeld (April 11, 1911-July 10, 1974). Kauffeld predictions about a pink-bodied, third species in 1936-1937 and dissertation research at Rutgers University in New Jersey in 2008-2014 by Jeremy Feinberg determine scientific designations.

The ranid (from Latin rāna, [“frog”] and Greek ειδής [-“like”] via Latin –idæ) expects wetland complexes of early successional cattails, reeds, shrubs; flooded meadows; and open-canopied marshes.

The Anura (from Greek ἀν-, “not” and οὐρά, “tail” via ανοὐρά) amphibian order member favors March through August, sometimes October and sometimes November as breeding-season months.

Temperatures from 50 to 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit (10 to 18 degrees Celsius galvanize adult females annually gestating 3,000 to 6,000 flat, white, 0.067-inch (1.7-millimeter) diameter eggs. Ephemeral pools, flooded meadows, freshwater wetlands, open-canopied marshes, riverside floodplains, slow-flowing streams and tide-influenced backwaters in fragmented coastal lowlands and uplands then house the egg-hatched tadpoles. Gill-breathing, herbivorous (from Latin herba [“grass”] and vorō [“I devour”] tadpoles inhabit boggy wetlands inimical to northern and southern leopard frog tadpoles 2 to 3 years.

Air, land and water pollution and temperatures outside 59 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit (16 and 27 degrees Celsius) jeopardize North American Atlantic coast leopard frog habitats.

Six- to 9-year life expectancies keep North American Atlantic coastal leopard frogs as fish-like tadpoles until the latter know 2.56- to 3.27-inch (65- to 83-millimeter) lengths.

Dr. Kauffeld looked to Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, northern and southern leopard frogs’ respective coastal limits, as likely lodging an overlapping, pink-bellied, third species. The male manages axillary amplexus (armpit embrace) by maintaining forelimbs behind his mate's front legs while mounted on her back to fertilize dark, sticky eggs externally. Tadpoles need algae, organic debris, plant tissue and suspended matter even though beetles, caterpillars, crickets, flies, mosquitoes, moths, pillbugs, sowbugs, spiders, stinkbugs and worms nourish adults.

North American carpenter frog habitats offer season's coldest temperatures, north to southward, from minus 10 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23.33 to minus 12.22 degrees Celsius).

Artificial and natural ditches, lakes, marshes, ponds, sloughs and swamps with bay laurel-dominant, cypress-dominated emergent, floating, submerged, waterside grassy, herbaceous, weedy, woody plants promote green treefrogs.

Calls, genetics and both respectively queue into 484.6-mile- (780-kilometer-) long distribution ranges Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia; Connecticut; and New Jersey and New York. Adults reveal heads of greater length than width, two circlar tympanic-membraned eardrums 65-plus percent larger than protuberant ee diameters and dorsolateral folds from eyes to hindlimbs. They seem morphologically similar to overlapping northern and southern leopard frog bodies even though their low-pitched, single-pulsed chuck sounds dissimilar to northerners' slow snores and southerners' swift stutters.

North American Atlantic coast leopard frog habitats tender short forelimbs with unwebbed fingers, long rearlimbs with webbed toes, paired vocal sacs behind eardrums, cream-colored abdomens and brown-spotted blue-gray-green-mint bodies.

Leopard frog distributions in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic U.S. show (left) currently recognized IUCN (2012) range maps for Rana pipiens and R. sphenocephala, with potential overlap areas and (right) newly interpreted distributions including Rana kauffeldi with R. pipiens and R. sphenocephala; Jeremy A. Feinberg, Catherine E. Newman, Gregory J. Watkins-Colwell, Matthew D. Schlesinger, Brian Zarate, Brian R. Curry, H. Bradley Shaffer and Joanna Burger, "Cryptic Diversity in Metropolis: Confirmation of a New Leopard Frog Species (Anura: Ranidae) from New York City and Surrounding Atlantic Coast Regions," PLOS ONE, Oct. 29, 2014, Figure 1: CC BY 4.0 International, 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:

Photographs of Rana kauffeldi sp. nov. holotype (YPM 13217) show live male (a) whole body, dorsolateral view (photograph by BRC Brian R. Curry) and (b) dorsal view (photograph by BZ Brian Zarate) and preserved male (a) dorsal view and (b) ventral view (photographs by GWC Gregory Watkins-Colwell); Jeremy A. Feinberg, Catherine E. Newman, Gregory J. Watkins-Colwell, Matthew D. Schlesinger, Brian Zarate, Brian R. Curry, H. Bradley Shaffer and Joanna Burger, "Cryptic Diversity in Metropolis: Confirmation of a New Leopard Frog Species (Anura: Ranidae) from New York City and Surrounding Atlantic Coast Regions," PLOS ONE, Oct. 29, 2014, Figure 2: Brian R. Curry, Gregory Watkins-Colwell, Brian Zarate, CC BY 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rana_kauffeldi_holotype.png; CC BY 4.0 International, research article, via PLOS ONE @ https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0108213; CC BY 4.0 International, Figure 2, via PLOS ONE @ https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0108213

Leopard frog distributions in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic U.S. show (left) currently recognized IUCN (2012) range maps for Rana pipiens and R. sphenocephala, with potential overlap areas and (right) newly interpreted distributions including Rana kauffeldi with R. pipiens and R. sphenocephala; Jeremy A. Feinberg, Catherine E. Newman, Gregory J. Watkins-Colwell, Matthew D. Schlesinger, Brian Zarate, Brian R. Curry, H. Bradley Shaffer and Joanna Burger, "Cryptic Diversity in Metropolis: Confirmation of a New Leopard Frog Species (Anura: Ranidae) from New York City and Surrounding Atlantic Coast Regions," PLOS ONE, Oct. 29, 2014, Figure 1: CC BY 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atlantic-Coast-leopard-frog-distribution.png; CC BY 4.0 International, research article, via PLOS ONE @ https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0108213; CC BY 4.0 International, Figure 1, via PLOS ONE @ https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0108213

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