Pine Woods Treefrog Habitats: Brown to Gray Coastal Morse-Coding Body

Summary: North American pine woods treefrog habitats get brown to gray bodies with orange-, white-, yellow-spotted thighs Morse-coding in southern coastal plains.

pine woods treefrog (Hyla femoralis); Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Folkston, southeastern Georgia; Aug. 22, 2012: Judy Gallagher (judygva), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

North American pine woods treefrog habitats accumulate, as their name anticipates, in pine-abundant peninsular and southeastern coastal plain distribution ranges in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

Pine woods treefrogs bear their common name for habitat and daytime breeding and day-in, day-out nonbreeding season living quarters and Morse-code frog for telegraph key-like sounds. Their scientific name Hyla femoralis (thigh-marked wood [dweller]) communicates Hylidae family membership and confirms the chorus and cricket frog relative's characteristic orange-, white-, or yellow-spotted thighs. Scientific designations defer to descriptions in 1800 by François Marie Daudin (Aug. 26, 1776-Nov. 30, 1803), French zoologist dedicated to natural history and physics in Paris.

Pine woods treefrog life cycles expect sandy or well-drained soils and summer breeding pools in coastal swampy upland pocosins, cypress swamps and oak and pine forests.

March through October function as breeding season months in pine woods treefrog life cycles of explosive one- or two-night breeding after heavy spring through summer rainfall.

Large sticky toe pads guide long-legged, slim-waisted pine woods treefrogs from bare soil, ground cover, low-lying shrubs and tree canopies to roadside ditches and temporary pools. Matched filtering harvests call frequencies from long-released air hurtling over vocal cords into vocal sacs for circular, dual tympanic-membraned eardrums and inner-ear amphibian and basilar papillae. It identifies pine woods treefrog call frequencies in large, mixed-species choruses with Cope's gray treefrogs, eastern narrow-mouthed toads, little grass frogs, oak toads and squirrel treefrogs.

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

Eight hundred to 2,000 eggs in 100- to 125-egg clusters near water surfaces and gill-breathing, keel-tailed, legless tadpoles seven to 10 weeks later keep to water.

Herbivorous (plant tissue-eating), 0.43- to 0.51-inch (11- to 13-millimeter) pine woods treefrog tadpoles look like little-legged, long-tailed, 0.59-plus-inch (15-plus-millimeter) carnivores (flesh-eaters) within 50 to 75 days. 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 pine woods treefrog habitats offer season's coldest temperatures, northward to southward, from minus 0 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 17.77 to 1.66 degrees Celsius).

Broadleaf, conifer and mixed forests, flooded grasslands and savannahs and sandy scrublands with cabbage palms, turkey oak and wiregrass protect longleaf and slash pine woods treefrogs.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 1- to 1.75-inch (2.54- to 4.44-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. Adults reveal brown, gray, gray-green, red-brown bodies with day-active, gold-rimmed, round-pupiled eyes, large-blotched backs and legs and one orange-, white- or yellow-spotted row under each thigh. Advertisement calls sound like almost continuous strings of dik-dik-dika-dika-dika-dika-dika-dika notes that seem raspily similar to frantically tapping dashes and dots together irregularly in telegraph key-like tempo.

Dark-blotched, brown-, red-brown-, gray-, green-gray bodies Morse-coding in cypress-oak-pine southern coastal plains tell pine woods treefrogs from other anurans in North American pine woods treefrog habitats.

calling adult male pine woods treefrog (Hyla femoralis); Washington Parish, southeastern Louisiana: Jeromi Hefner/U.S. Geological Survey, 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:

pine woods treefrog (Hyla femoralis); Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Folkston, southeastern Georgia; Aug. 22, 2012: Judy Gallagher (judygva), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/52450054@N04/7841933396/

calling adult male pine woods treefrog (Hyla femoralis); Washington Parish, southeastern Louisiana: Jeromi Hefner/U.S. Geological Survey, Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) @ https://armi.usgs.gov/gallery/result.php?search=Hyla+femoralis

For further information:

Bosc, Louis Augustin Guillaume. 1819. "La Raine Fémorale." Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle Appliquée aux Arts, à l'Agriculture, à l'Économie Rurale et Domestique, à la Médicine, etc. Vol. XXVIII. Paris, France: Chez Deterville, MDCCCXIX
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/19430516

Daudin, F.M. (François Marie). 1800. "Rainette Femorale -- Hyla Femoralis Bosc." Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupèdes Ovipares. Livraison 1: opposite plate 5. Paris: Fuchs et Delalain Fils.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4028117

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. "Dryphytes femoralis (Daudin, 1800)." 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/Hylinae/Dryophytes/Dryophytes-femoralis

"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/