North American Southern Cricket Frog Habitats Are Grassy, Wet Lowlands

Summary: North American southern cricket frog habitats are grassy, wet lowlands from Virginia to Florida, Florida to Louisiana, Mississippi to Tennessee eastward.

southern cricket frog (Acris gryllus): USGS National Wetlands Research Center/Brad Michael "Bones" Glorioso, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI)

North American southern cricket frog habitats are grassy, wet lowlands that are anchored within the southeastern coastal plain areas of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Southern cricket frogs bear their common name and its alternative, southeastern cricket frog, because of their biogeography belonging among wildlife native to the southeastern United States. They additionally carry the common name coastal plain cricket frog as first-named, nominate subspecies, Acris gryllus gryllus, to southeastern and southern cricket frog species Acris gryllus. Acris gryllus dorsalis (from Greek ἀκρίς, “locust” and γρύλλος, “Egyptian dancer” via Latin gryllus, “cricket, grasshopper” and Latin dorsalis, “the back’s”) designates Florida cricket frog subspecies. Coastal plain and southern cricket frogs carry the scientific name because of characterizations in 1825 by John Eatton Le Conte (Feb. 22, 1784-Nov. 21, 1860). Florida cricket frog scientific designations derive from descriptions in 1827 by Richard Harlan (Sept. 19, 1796-Sept. 30, 1843).

John Eatton Le Conte, Jr. (Feb. 22, 1784-Nov. 21, 1860) in 1825 effectuated scientific examinations of southern cricket frog species and coastal plain cricket frog subspecies.

Richard Harlan (Sep. 19, 1796-Sep. 30, 1843) in 1827 furnished taxonomic findings about Acris gryllus dorsalis (from Latin dorsum, “the back” and -ālis, “-al” via dorsālis).

Predatory fish, salamanders, snakes, turtles and wading birds in surface-vegetated, waterside-vegetated bogs, lakes, ponds, pools, streams and swamps give coastal-plain and Florida subspecies four-month life expectancies. Open-canopied gum-swamp, pine-hardwood, pineland forests at 500- to 1,000-meter (1,640.42- to 3,280.84-foot) elevations house southern cricket frog-friendly grass-edged, sunny ditches, marshes, pools, puddles, rivers, water-lily meadows. Tadpoles and frogs respectively ingest there algae, organic debris and plant tissue and ants, aphids, bees, beetles, cicadas, flies, leafhoppers, mosquitoes, sawflies, scale, spiders, springtails, wasps.

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

Possible but rare 1- to 5-year life cycles kindle, respectively after three dormant months, from the late-winter month of February through the mid-autumn month of October.

Physically and sexually mature 90- to 100-day-old females locate one, one-plus annual 150-egg clutch singly or in 7- to 10-egg groups on shallow-pond bottoms and plants. Their eggs maintain four-day hatching schedules that then mandate 90- to 100-day metamorphoses from gill-breathing, tailed tadpoles to cricket- and locust-like jumping, four-legged, large-mouthed, lung-breathing frogs. The Hylidae (from Greek ύλη, “forest” via Latin Hylas and -ειδής, “-like” via Latin -idae) tree-frog family member, as tadpoles, maximally nets 9- to 15-millimeter-long bodies.

North American southern cricket frog habitats offer season's coldest temperatures, north to southward, from minus 5 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20.55 to 1.7 degrees Celsius).

The Anura (from Greek ἀν-, “not” and οὐρά, “tail” via ανοὐρά) short-bodied amphibian order member, as metamorphosed, 0.35- to -0.59-inch-long frog, no longer pursues aquatic-plant nutrition.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 0.625- to 1.625-inch (1.5875- to 4.1275-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. Pointed snouts ret atop brown, gray or green warty bodies with gray-, green- or red-striped backs; bold-, dark-, lengthwise-striped thigh undersides; and semi-webbed, toe pad-free feet. Advertisement calls from lake, pond, pool and stream floating vegetation and shorelines sound like 10-note series of drawn-out, even-paced, metallic, steady giik, giik-giik, giik-giik-giik, giik-giik-giik-giik spaces.

North American southern cricket frog habitats teem with clicking, leaping brown-gray-green, warty bodies with striped backs; pointed snouts; non-padded, semi-webbed hind feet; and lengthwise-, rear-striped thighs.

Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, map of "geographic distribution of Acris gryllus," with range data from Geoffrey Hammerson 2004. Acris gryllus. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 11 November 2012, @ https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/55287/196333999: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, 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:

southern cricket frog (Acris gryllus); St. Tammany Parish, southeastern Louisiana: 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=Acris+gryllus

Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, map of "geographic distribution of Acris gryllus," with range data from Geoffrey Hammerson 2004. Acris gryllus. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 11 November 2012, @ https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/55287/196333999: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acris_gryllus_map-fr.svg

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