Green Treefrog Habitats: Harshly Nasal Southeastern Lime-Green Body

Summary: North American green treefrog habitats get gold-lidded, harsh nasal-calling, lime-green bodies with pink-green abdomens in wooded southeast wetlands.

Green treefrog rests on lip of green pitcherplant (Sarracenia oreophila) in The Nature Conservancy's Coosa Bog Preserve, Cherokee County, northeastern Alabama: Alan Cressler/USGS, Public Domain, via U.S. Geological Survey

North American green treefrog habitats abound in swampy distribution ranges in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.

Green treefrogs bear their common name for skin color and daytime and non-breeding season living quarters and cowbell or rain frogs for bell-like and precipitation-prompted calls. Their scientific name Hyla cinerea (ash-colored wood [dweller]) communicates green treefrog membership in the Hylidae family with chorus frogs, cricket frogs and temperate and tropical treefrogs. Scientific designations defer to descriptions in 1799 by Johann Gottlob Theaenus Schneider (Jan. 18, 1750-Jan. 12, 1822), German classical antiquity professor and naturalist from Collm, Saxony.

Green treefrog life cycles expect rain-fed permanent bayous, ditches, lakes, ponds and swamps and permanent, semi-permanent and temporary pools within reach of bushes, shrubs and trees.

Late March through early October fulfill green treefrog life cycle requirements of yearly breeding season months with nightly temperatures above 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.33 degrees Celsius).

Slim-waisted green treefrogs go on large sticky toe pads and long legs from bushes, shrubs and trees to breeding bayous, ditches, lakes, ponds, pools and swamps. 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 green treefrog habitats.

Three hundred to 4,000-egg clusters and, four to 14 days later, gill-breathing, keel-tailed tadpoles keep to water whereas legged, lung-breathing, tailless adults know land and water.

Green treefrogs look like 0.17- to 0.22-inch (4.5- to 5.5-millimeter), herbivorous (plant tissue-eating) fish and 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. 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 green treefrog habitats offer season's coldest temperatures, northward to southward, from minus 5 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20.55 to minus 3.88 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.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 1.25- to 2.5-inch (3.18- to 6.35-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. Adults retain gold-rimmed, night-active, vertical-pupiled eyes; lime-green, smooth-skinned bodies that reveal black-olive when cold and sometimes black-bordered, white-striped sides and yellow-spotted backs; and pink-green abdomens. Advertisement, courtship and rain calls sound like nasal, short quank or quonk vocalizations whereas anti-competitor aggression and anti-contact release calls sound like harsh, guttural quarr-quarr-quarr vocalizations.

Harsh nasal calls and side-striped lime-green bodies in Gulf Coast and southeastern wooded wetlands tell green treefrogs from other anurans in North American green treefrog habitats.

green treefrog (Hyla cinerea) under synonym Hyla viridis; depiction by Italian-born scientific illustrator J. Sera, lithograph by Peter S. Duval & Son, in J. E. Holbrook's North American Herpetology (1838), vol. III, Plate XX, opposite page 95: Public Domain via Biodiversity Heritage Library

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

Green treefrog rests on lip of green pitcherplant (Sarracenia oreophila) in The Nature Conservancy's Coosa Bog Preserve, Cherokee County, northeastern Alabama: Alan Cressler/USGS, Public Domain, via U.S. Geological Survey @ https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/green-tree-frog

green treefrog (Hyla cinerea) under synonym Hyla viridis; depiction by Italian-born scientific illustrator J. Sera, lithograph by Peter S. Duval & Son, in J. E. Holbrook's North American Herpetology (1838), vol. III, Plate XX, opposite page 95: Public Domain via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/35765544

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 cinereus (Schneider, 1799." 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-cinereus

Holbrook, John Edwards, M.D. 1838. "Hyla viridis." North American Herpetology; Or, A Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States. Vol. III: 95-98. Philadelphia PA: J. Dobson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4075426

"Hyla cinerea Green treefrog." Page 458. In: David Burnie and Don E. Wilson. (Eds.) Smithsonian Animal: The Definitive Visual Guide. Revised and Updated. New York NY: DK Publishing, 2011.

Schneider, Ioan Gottlob (Johann Gottlob). 1799. "XI. Calamita cinereus." Historiae Amphibiorum Naturalis et Literariae. Fasciculus Primus Continens Ranaa, Calamitas, Bufones, Salamandras et Hydros in Genera et Species Descriptoa Notisque Suis Distinctos. Vol. I: 174. Ienae [Jena, Germany]: Sumtibus Friederici Frommanni [Friedrich Frommann].
Available via Internet Archive @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3425660

"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/