Squirrel Treefrog Habitats: Rasping Brown to Green Southeasterner

Summary: North American squirrel treefrog habitats get dark, gold-rimmed eyes, brown to green smooth-skinned bodies with gray squirrel-like calls southeastward.

squirrel treefrog (Hyla squirella); Okaloacoochee Slough State Forest, near Felda, Hendry County, southwestern Florida; Dec. 10, 2014: Judy Gallagher (judygva), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

North American squirrel treefrog habitats access deciduous woodland, pine flatwood, sandhill and suburban distribution ranges in coastal plain and peninsular Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Squirrel treefrogs bear their common name for squirrel-like rain calls from woody vegetation and for daytime breeding season and daytime and nighttime non-breeding season living quarters. They carry the scientific name Hyla squirella (squirrel wood [dweller]) for counting among Hylidae family members with chorus frogs, cricket frogs and temperate and tropical treefrogs. Descriptions by François Marie Daudin (Aug. 29, 1776-Nov. 30, 1803), husband of Marie Adélaïde Geneviève de Grégoire de Saint-Sauveur (Apr. 6, 1775-Oct. 28, 1803), dominate taxonomies.

Squirrel treefrog life cycles expect permanent, semi-permanent and temporary ponds and pools and roadside ditches in deciduous woodlands, pine flatwoods and wooded sandhills and suburban settings.

March through August furnish squirrel treefrog life cycles with an explosive one- to two-night breeding season after heavy rains among calling males, non-calling satellites and females.

Large, sticky toe pads, long legs and rainfall get squirrel treefrogs to shallow waters from suburban brush, buildings, clothes poles and gardens and from woody vegetation. The matched filtering of vibrations headed from two circular tympanic-membraned eardrums to the inner-ear's amphibian and basilar papillae helps squirrel treefrogs hear their frequencies despite cacophony. Squirrel treefrog lungs impel air over vocal cords to inflate vocal sacs and implement closed-mouth, closed-nostril advertisement, aggression, courtship, rain and release and open-mouthed distress 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 squirrel treefrog habitats.

Nine hundred to 1,000-plus double- and single-laid eggs and, 24 to 43 hours later, gill-breathing, keel-tailed tadpoles keep to water whereas adults know land and water.

Squirrel treefrogs look like herbivorous (plant tissue-eating), 0.43- to 0.51-inch (11- to 13-millimeter) fish and like little-legged, long-tailed carnivorous (flesh-eating) frogs 40 to 50 days later. Scramble competition means that males mounted by males make release calls and that advertisers and non-calling satellites maintain forelimbs behind female forelimbs to fertilize 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 squirrel treefrog habitats offer season's coldest temperatures, northward to southward, from minus 5 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 to minus 3.88 degrees Celsius).

Bays, moist broadleaf, coniferous and mixed forests and pine-dominated woodlands, coastal plains, flooded ditches, grasslands, savannahs, scrublands and shrublands, suburban gardens and swamps promote squirrel treefrogs.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 0.87- to 1.62-inch (2.22- to 4.12-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. Adults reveal gold-rimmed, round-pupiled eyes and color-shifting brown to rich green, smooth-skinned bodies that sometimes retain green treefroglike light-striped sides or pine woods treefroglike spotted backs. Their advertisement calls sound like briskly repetitive, buzzing, nasal rrraak-rrraak-rrraak-rrraak-rrraak quacks whereas rain calls seem like raspier, weaker gray squirrel-like scolding from bushes, shrubs and trees.

Brown to rich green, smooth-skinned bodies rasping gray squirrel-like around suburban and wooded waters tell squirrel treefrogs from other anurans in North American squirrel treefrog habitats.

squirrel treefrog (Hyla squirella), spotted brown phase; Atchafalaya Basin, south central Louisiana: Brad Michael "Bones" Glorioso/USGS National Wetlands Research Center (now USGS Wetland and Aquatic 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:

squirrel treefrog (Hyla squirella); Okaloacoochee Slough State Forest, near Felda, Hendry County, southwestern Florida; Dec. 10, 2014: Judy Gallagher (judygva), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/52450054@N04/16150299011/

squirrel treefrog (Hyla squirella), spotted brown phase; Atchafalaya Basin, south central Louisiana: Brad Michael "Bones" Glorioso/USGS National Wetlands Research Center (now USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center), Public Domain, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) @ https://armi.usgs.gov/gallery/detail.php?id=363

For further information:

Bosc, Louis Augustin Guillaume. 1819. "La Raine Squirelle." 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 Squirelle -- Hyla Squirella Bosc." Histoire Naturelle des Quadupèdes Ovipares. Livraison 1: between plates 4 and 5. Paris: Fuchs et Delalain Fils.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4028118

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. "Dryophytes squirellus (Daudin, 1800)." 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-squirellus

Holbrook. 1836. "Hyla squirella -- Bosc." North American Herpetology; Or, A Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States. Vol. I: 105-106. Philadelphia PA: J. Dobson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4075567

"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/