Brimley's Chorus Frogs: Rasping Striped Body with Barred, Striped Legs

Summary: North American Brimley's chorus frog habitats get rasping brown-gray-straw bodies with barred, striped legs, striped sides and triple-striped backs.

Brimley's chorus frog (Pseudacris brimleyi); Congaree Swamp National Monument (now Congaree National Park), Richland County, central South Carolina: Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL)/John D. Willson, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI)

North American Brimley's chorus frog habitats adjust to southeastern cool-weather, floodplain distribution ranges in Atlantic coastal piedmont and Atlantic coastal plain Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia and in Washington, D.C.

Brimley's chorus frogs bear their common name as a scientist's namesake and as Hylidae frog family choral companions of cricket frogs, other chorus frogs and treefrogs. The scientific name Pseudacris brimleyi (Brimley's false locust) commemorates Clement Samuel Brimley (Dec. 18, 1863-July 23, 1946), North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences zoologist in Raleigh. Schoolteacher Bartholomew Brandner Brandt's (July 30, 1898-May 23, 1983) and museum herpetology curator Charles Frederick Walker's (Dec. 22, 1904-Feb. 11, 1979) descriptions in 1933 drive taxonomies.

Brimley's chorus frog life cycles expect agricultural fields, clumped grasses, freshwater marshes, hardwood-pine forests, roadside ditches, shallow ponds, swampy river and stream floodplains, and temporary pools.

December through April function as breeding season months in Brimley's chorus frog life cycles since midwinter and early spring warm spells favor southeastern coastal cool-weather breeders.

Brimley's chorus frogs go on sticky toe pads through hardwood and pine, pine and secondary dune scrub forests and loblolly pine-, red maple- and sweetgum-dominated wetlands. Brimley's chorus frogs hear same-species calls, through matched filtering, despite geographical overlaps with American toads, southern and upland chorus and southern leopard frogs and spring peepers. Matched filtering impels frequency ranges of mating calls toward the same frequency ranges that vibrate two circular tympanic-membraned eardrums and the inner-ear's amphibian and basilar papillae.

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis fungal disease, fertilizer runoff, globally warmed climate change, nonnative species, pesticides, trematode fluke-induced deformities and ultraviolet radiation jeopardize North American Brimley's chorus frog habitats.

Clumped clusters of 300 eggs and, four to 14 days later, gill-breathing, keel-tailed tadpoles keep to water whereas legged, lung-breathing, tailless adults know land and water.

Jelly-coated 0.06-inch (1.6-millimeter) eggs let loose herbivores (plant-eaters) that, within 28 to 60 days, look like little-legged, long-tailed, 0.35- to 0.43-inch (9- to 11-millimeter) carnivores (flesh-eaters). 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. Tadpoles need algae, organic debris, plant tissue and suspended matter even though beetles, caterpillars, crickets, flies, mosquitoes, moths, pillbugs, sowbugs, spiders, stinkbugs and worms nourish adults.

North American Brimley's chorus frog habitats offer season's coldest temperatures, northward to southward, from 0 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 17.77 to minus 6.66 degrees Celsius).

Grassy, herbaceous, reedy, weedy, woody flooded cane stands, mixed forests and roadside ditches, lakes, marshes, seasonal pools, shallow ponds, sloughs and swamps promote Brimley's chorus frogs.

Lang Elliott, Carl Gerhardt and Carlos Davidson quantify 1- to 1.25-inch (2.54- to 3.18-centimeter) snout-vent (excrementary opening) lengths in The Frogs and Toads of North America. Adults reveal brown, gray, straw-colored bodies with black-striped sides from snout through day-active, gold-rimmed, round-pupiled eyes; light-lined upper lips; dark-, triple-striped backs; and lengthwise-barred, lengthwise-striped hind-limbs. Advertisement calls sound like rasping rrrack-rrrack-rrrack-rrrack-rrrack trills similar to rrraak-rrraak-rrraak-rrraak-rrraak quacks by semi-overlapping squirrel treefrogs and to rrrack-rrrack-rrrack-rrrack-rrrack-rrrack trills by non-overlapping mountain and spotted chorus frogs.

North American Brimley's chorus frog habitats teem with rasping trills from brown-gray-straw bodies with gold-rimmed eyes, light-lined lips, dark-striped sides, triple-striped backs and lengthwise-barred, lengthwise-striped hind-limbs.

Brimley's chorus frog's species name, brimleyi, honors English immigrant North Carolina naturalist Samuel Clement Brimley (Dec. 18, 1863-July 23, 1946); ca. 1940-1949 image of S.C. Brimley and his brother, Herbert Hutchinson Bailey (March 7, 1861-April 4, 1946): "This item is provided courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina," via North Carolina Digital Collections

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

Brimley's chorus frog (Pseudacris brimleyi); Congaree Swamp National Monument (now Congaree National Park), Richland County, central South Carolina: Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL)/John D. Willson, via USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) @ https://armi.usgs.gov/gallery/result.php?search=Pseudacris+brimleyi

Brimley's chorus frog's species name, brimleyi, honors English immigrant North Carolina naturalist Clement Samuel Brimley (Dec. 18, 1863-July 23, 1946); ca. 1940-1949 image of S.C. Brimley and his brother, Herbert Hutchinson Bailey (March 7, 1861-April 4, 1946): "This item is provided courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina," via North Carolina Digital Collections @ https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/brimley-h.-h./196294

For further information:

Brandt, B.B.; and C.F. Walker. 1933. "A New Species of Pseudacris from the Southeastern United States." Occasional Papers of the Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, no. 272:1-7 (Oct. 31, 1933). Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press.
Available via Deep Blue - University of Michigan Library @ https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/56711/OP272.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Cooper, John E. 1979. "The Brimley Brothers: North Carolina Naturalists." Brimleyana, no. 1 (March 1979): 1-14. Raleigh NC: North Carolina State Museum of Natural History.
Available via Internet Archive @ http://archive.org/stream/brimleyana19nort#page/1/mode/1up
Available via State Library of North Carolina - North Carolina Digital Collections @ http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/ref/collection/p16062coll9/id/22622

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 brimleyi Brandt and Walker, 1933." 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-brimleyi

"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/

VDGIF @VDGIF. 10 April 2015. "This #FrogFriday, learn about Brimley's Chorus Frog, found in Virginia's Coastal Plain." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/VDGIF/status/586513655438663680