Barking Treefrog Habitats: Barking Southeastern Warty Brown Green Body

Summary: North American barking treefrog habitats hear barks from brown to green, warty bodies with circle- or square-marked, side-striped bodies in the southeast.

barking treefrog (Hyla gratiosa); Hancock County, southernmost Mississippi: U.S. Geological Survey/photo by Jeromi Hefner, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI)

North American barking treefrog habitats accept distribution ranges in the southern coastal plains of Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia and inland in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Barking treefrogs bear their common name for barking doglike sounds of rain calls from bushes, shrubs and trees and for daytime and non-breeding season living quarters. Their scientific name Hyla gratiosa (pleasing wood [dweller]) communicates barking treefrog membership in the Hylidae family with chorus frogs, cricket frogs and temperate and tropical treefrogs. The scientific designation draws upon descriptions in 1856 by John Eatton Le Conte, Jr. (Feb. 22, 1784-Nov. 21, 1860), American naturalist from outside Shrewsbury, New Jersey.

Barking treefrog life cycles expect fishless, semi-permanent ditches, ponds and swamps in well-drained wooded wetlands with burrowable undergrounds and shelterable crevices and holes in woody plants.

Late March through mid-August fit into barking treefrog life cycle requirements of annual breeding season months with nighttime temperatures above 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.33 degrees Celsius).

Large, sticky, well-developed toe pads and rainfall get long-legged barking treefrogs from tree crevices and holes and from underground burrows to rain-fed ditches, ponds and swamps. Matched filtering has barking treefrogs and hybrids with green treefrogs hear species-specific frequencies that vibrate two circular tympanic-membraned eardrums and the inner-ear's amphibian and basilar papillae. Closed-mouth, closed-nostril advertisement and courtship of females, aggression and release against males and rain calls impel air from lungs, over vocal cords and into 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 barking treefrog habitats.

Fifteen hundred to 4,000-egg clusters and, about seven days later, gill-breathing, keel-tailed, legless tadpoles keep to water whereas legged, lung-breathing, tailless adults know land and water.

Barking treefrogs look like 0.71- to 1.10-inch (18- to 28-millimeter), herbivorous (plant tissue-eating) fish and little-legged, long-tailed little frog-like carnivores (flesh-eaters) 41 to 160 days later. Axillary amplexus (armpit embrace) maintains a mature male's forelimbs behind his mate's front legs while mounted atop her back for external fertilization of adhesive, dark 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 barking treefrog habitats offer season's coldest temperatures, northward to southward, from minus 5 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20.55 to minus 1.11 degrees Celsius).

Backwaters, bay laurel-dominant, cypress-dominated permanent, semi-permanent, sinkhole and temporary ditches, ponds and pools, bogs, cornfields, flooded sandpits, impoundments, live oak hammocks and swamps protect barking treefrogs.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 2- to 2.75-inch (5.08- to 6.98-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. Adults reveal changeably bright green to dull brown, warty-skinned bodies, usually with dark-circled or dark-squared backs and legs and ragged white-striped sides, and gold-lidded dark eyes. Advertisement and similar-sounding courtship calls while floating sound like resonant tonk vocalizations whereas typically similar rain calls from vegetation sound like a dog's irregular, slow barks.

Barking and changeably bright green to dull brown warty skin in southern coastal plains tell barking treefrogs from other anurans in North American barking treefrog habitats.

calling adult male barking treefrog (Hyla gratiosa); Hancock County, southernmost Mississippi: U.S. Geological Survey/photo by Jeromi Hefner, 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:

barking treefrog (Hyla gratiosa); Hancock County, southernmost Mississippi: U.S. Geological Survey/photo by Jeromi Hefner, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) @ https://armi.usgs.gov/gallery/result.php?search=Hyla+gratiosa

calling adult male barking treefrog (Hyla gratiosa); Hancock County, southernmost Mississippi: U.S. Geological Survey/photo by Jeromi Hefner, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) @ https://armi.usgs.gov/gallery/result.php?search=Hyla+gratiosa

For further information:

Elliott, Lang; Gerhardt, Carl; and Davidson, Carlos. 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. "Dryophytes gratiosus (LeConte, 1856)." American Museum of Natural History > Our Research > Vertebrate Zoology > Herpetology > Amphibian Species of the World Database.
Available @ http://research.amnh.org/vz/herpetology/amphibia/index.php//Amphibia/Anura/Hylidae/Hylinae/Dryophytes/Dryophytes-gratiosus

Le Conte, John. 1856. "Description of a New Species of Hyla From Georgia: Hyla gratiosa." Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciencese of Philadelphia, vol. VIII (1856): 146. Philadelphia PA: Merrihew & Thompson, 1857.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1935201

"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/