Spring Peeper Habitats: Eye-Lined, Jingling, Woodsy, X-Marked Body

Summary: Eastern North American spring peeper habitats get wet woodland-colored, x-marked bodies with banded legs, gold-rimmed round-pupiled eyes and jingling calls.

spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer), with characteristic X marking on back; Atchafalaya Basin, south central Louisiana: Brad Michael "Bones" Glorioso/USGS National Wetlands Research Center, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI)

North American spring peeper habitats assume distribution ranges from Nova Scotia through Florida, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Alberta, New Brunswick and everywhere in-between and isolated populations along the Nebraska-South Dakota borderlines.

Autumn pipers (Pseudacris crucifer bartramiana, for William Bartram [April 20, 1739-July 22, 1823]) southwards and spring peepers northwards bear their common names for seasonal breeding calls. Their scientific name Pseudacris crucifer (cross-bearing false locust) concerns northern subspecies categorized in 1839 by Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied (Sept. 23, 1782-Feb. 3, 1867). Descriptions in 1939 by Francis A. Harper (Nov. 17, 1886-Nov. 17, 1972) designate Pseudacris crucifer bartramiana, subspecies with dark-marked abdomens, from southeastern Texas through northern Florida.

Spring peeper life cycles expect semi-permanent and temporary breeding ponds in wet woodlands with bare soil, ground cover and small-sized waterside bushes, shrubs, trees and vines.

February through June and October through February favor breeding despite predatory brown trout, garter snakes, giant water bugs, leeches, mole salamanders, owls and predaceous diving beetles.

Biochemical criteria and large, sticky, well-developed toe pads respectively give both northern and southern spring peepers present groupings with chorus frogs and previous groupings with treefrogs. Matched filtering by dual circular tympanic-membraned eardrums and the inner-ear's amphibian and basilar papillae helps spring peepers hear species-specific calls despite background noises and mixed-species choruses. Lung expirations over vocal cords inflate vocal sacs for closed-mouth, closed-nostril advertisements for and courtships of mates, aggression against competitors, release from contact and rain calls.

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

Eight hundred to 1,000 eggs, each 0.04 to 0.10 inch (1.1 to 2.6 millimeters) in diameter, and, 6 to 12 days later, tadpoles keep to water.

Spring peepers live as keel-tailed, lung-breathing, 0.41-inch (10.3-millimeter) herbivores (plant-eaters) and, within 45 to 90 days, little-legged, long-tailed, 0.47- to 0.55-inch (12- to 14-millimeter) carnivores (flesh-eaters). Axillary amplexus means an armpit embrace of female forelimbs by the front legs of a male mounted atop her back for external fertilization of her eggs. Unlike algae-, organic debris-, plant-eating tadpoles, adults need ants, beetles, caddisflies, craneflies, crickets, flies, grasshoppers, mites, mosquitoes, moths, pillbugs, sowbugs, spiders, stinkbugs, termites, wasps and worms.

North American spring peeper habitats offer season's coldest temperatures, northward to southward, from minus 45 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.11 to minus 3.88 degrees Celsius).

Blackland prairies, coastal, conifer, hardwood, lowland, mixed, mountain forests, coastal pine barrens, grasslands, savannahs, scrublands and shrublands with boneset, elderberry, goldenrod and Joe-Pye-weed protect spring peepers.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 0.75- to 1.25-inch (1.91- to 3.18-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. Adults reveal brown, gray, olive, rust-orange or straw, smooth-skinned bodies with dark crucifix-like and x-marked backs, dark-banded legs and dark lines running between day-active, gold-rimmed eyes. Advertisement, aggression and rain calls respectively sound like fast, loud, nearly pure-toned, piercing, rising-pitched, sleigh bell-jingled peeps, like rising-pitched, stuttering purrrreeeek trills and like squeaky peeps.

Jingling peeps, lines between gold-rimmed, round-pupiled eyes and woodland-colored, x-marked bodies with banded legs tell spring peepers from other anurans in North American spring peeper habitats.

calling adult male spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer); Atchafalaya Basin, south central Louisiana: Brad Michael "Bones" Glorioso/USGS National Wetlands Research Center, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI)

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer), with characteristic X marking on back; Atchafalaya Basin, south central Louisiana: Brad Michael "Bones" Glorioso/USGS National Wetlands Research Center, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) @ https://armi.usgs.gov/gallery/result.php?search=Pseudacris+crucifer

calling adult male spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer); Atchafalaya Basin, south central Louisiana: Brad Michael "Bones" Glorioso/USGS National Wetlands Research Center, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) @ https://armi.usgs.gov/gallery/result.php?search=Pseudacris+crucifer

For further information:

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. "Pseudacris crucifer (Wied-Neuwied, 1838)." 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/Hylidae/Acridinae/Pseudacris/Pseudacris-crucifer

Harper, Francis. 1939. "A Southern Subspecies of the Spring Peeper (Hyla Crucifera)." Notulae Naturae of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, no. 27 (Sept. 14, 1939): 1-4.
Available via Google Books @ https://books.google.com/books?id=4sOhRoU_FP0C

Norment, Christopher J. March 2000. "Francis Harper (1886-1972)." Arctic, vol. 53, no. 1 (March 2000): 72-75.
Available @ http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic53-1-72.pdf

"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/

Wied, Maximilian, Prinz zu. 1839. "1) Hyla crucifer." Reise in das Innere Nord-America in den Jahren 1832. Erster Band: 275-276. Coblenz, Germany: J. Hölscher.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48176303