North American Fowler’s Toad Habitats Are Gravelly, Sandy, Woody

Summary: North American Fowler’s toad habitats are gravelly, sandy, woody flood plains with well-drained soils for adult nests and shallow waters for egg nests.

Fowler's toad (Anaxyrus fowleri), with typical light stripe down center of dorsum (back); Cape May National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Cape May County, southernmost New Jersey; Saturday, June 6, 2009, 14:58:16, photo by Laurie Perlick/USFWS: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- Northeast Region), Public Domain, via Flickr

North American Fowler’s toad habitats are gravelly, sandy, woody flood plains, with well-drained soil-friendly adult and shallow-water egg nests everywhere between New Hampshire through panhandle Florida, Texas through Iowa, Illinois through Vermont.

Fowler’s toads bear Anura (from Greek ανοὐρά, “tail-less”) amphibian order and Bufonidae (from Latin būfō, “toad” and Greek -ειδής [“-like”] via Latin –idæ) true-frog family memberships. Respectively accepted and anticipated scientific names Bufo fowleri and Anaxyrus fowleri (from Greek ἄναξ, “chief, king”) commemorate naturalist Samuel Page Fowler (April 22, 1800-Dec. 15, 1888). Scientific descriptions derived from bufonid denizens discerned in Milton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, in 1882 by Massachusetts-born herpetologist Mary Hewes Hinckley (April 6, 1845-1944) drive taxonomic designations.

Fowler's toad life cycles expect permanent, semi-permanent and temporary breeding ditches, lakes, ponds, pools and rivers with gravelly, sandy, well-drained bottomland hardwood-forested to dry pine-wooded soils.

April through May fill Fowler's toad life cycles with breeding-season months even as their breeding calls frequently flow into the wildlife sounds of late-winter southern months.

Breeding bayous, ditches, lakes, ponds, pools and swamps sometimes generate hybrid Fowler’s toads with range-overlapping American (Bufo/Anaxyrus americanus), Southern (B./A. terrestris) and Woodhouse’s (B./A. woodhousii) Toads. Matched filtering helps them hear, despite mixed-species choruses, by calls having frequency ranges that vibrate two circular tympanic-membraned eardrums and the inner-ear's amphibian and basilar papillae. Closed-mouth, closed-nostril advertisement, similar courtship and rain, aggression and similar release calls involve lung expirations that impel air streams over vocal cords and inflate vocal sacs.

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

Two 7,000- to 10,000-egg strings and, four to 14 days later, gill-breathing, keel-tailed tadpoles keep to water, which legged, lung-breathing, tailless adults know along with land.

Fowler’s toads look like 4.5- to 5.5-millimeter (0.17- to 0.22-inch), herbivorous (plant-eating) fish and like little-legged, long-tailed, 2.36-plus-inch (60-plus-millimeter) carnivores (flesh-eaters) 25 to 45 days later. 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 as beetles, caterpillars, crickets, flies, mosquitoes, moths, pillbugs, sowbugs, spiders, stinkbugs and worms nourish adults.

North American Fowler's toad habitats offer season's coldest temperatures, north to southward, from minus 20 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 28.88 to minus 6.66 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 Fowler's toads.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 2- to 3.75-inch (5.08- to 9.52-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. Adults reveal gold-rimmed dark eyes, chunky, dry, hefty, short-legged, squat brown, gray, olive or red bodies with three warts or more within each light-edged dark spot. Advertisement calls sound like buzzing, crybaby-like, nasal, 1- to 5-second screaming, wailing wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa trills and, for American and Fowler's toad hybrids, 3- to 17-second semi-musical trills.

North American Fowler's toad habitats tether brown-gray-olive-red, wailing bodies with three-plus warts per light-edged dark spots and troublesome bufotoxins from parotoid glands that touch cranial crests.

range map for Fowler's toad (Anaxyrus fowleri): 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:

Fowler's toad (Anaxyrus fowleri), with typical light stripe down center of dorsum (back); Cape May National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Cape May County, southernmost New Jersey; Saturday, June 6, 2009, 14:58:16, photo by Laurie Perlick/USFWS: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- Northeast Region), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwsnortheast/4678374341/

range map for Fowler's toad (Anaxyrus fowleri): 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:

Beane, Jeffrey C.; Alvin L. Braswell; Joseph C. Mitchell; William M. Palmer; and Julian R. Harrison III. 2010. "Fowler's Toad Bufo fowleri (or Anaxyrus fowleri)." Page 122. 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.

Cope, Edward D. (Drinker). 1875. "Check-List of North American Batrachia and Reptilia; With a Systematic List of the Higher Groups, and an Essay on Geographical Distribution. Based on the Specimens Contained in the U.S. National Museum: Bufo lentiginosus, subspecies fowleri, Putnam, MSS." Bulletin of the United States National Museum, vol. I, no. 1: 29. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1875.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/32374042

Dickerson, Mary C. (Cynthia). 1906. "Fowler's Toad Bufo fowleri Putnam." The Frog Book; North American Toads and Frogs With a Study of the Habits and Life Histories of Those of the Northeastern States: 93-97; Color Plate IV (between pages 90-91). New York NY: Doubleday, Page & Company.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1184123
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/frogbooknorthame01dick#page/93/mode/1up

Elliott, Lang; Carl Gerhardt; and Carlos Davidson. 2009. "Fowler's Toad Bufo fowleri (Anaxyrus fowleri) (2" - 3 3/4")." Pages 132-133. In: 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 fowleri (Hinckley, 1882)." 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-fowleri

Hinckley, Mary H. 1882. "On Some Differences in the Mouth Structure of Tadpoles of the Anourous Batrachians Found in Milton, Mass.: B. fowleri Putnam." Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol. XXI (Jan. 4, 1882): 309-310. Boston MA: Boston Society of Natural History, 1883.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/53901241
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/proceedingsbost09unkngoog#page/n325/mode/1up

Shaitan, Iblis. 30 March 2004. "ii. MARY HEWES HINCKLEY, b. April 06, 1845, Milton, Suffolk County, Massachusetts; d. 1944." In: Re: Bio of Samuel - 1 Hinckley (1589-1662) Mass." Genealogy > Forum > Surnames > Hinckley.
Available @ https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/hinckley/564/

"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/