Wildlife in South Carolina - Types of South Carolinian Animals

-



hyla tree frog :: Article Creator

What's Your Diagnosis?: Limb Discoloration On A Depressed Tree Frog (Hyla Cinerea)

Cite this article

Mayer, J., Sanchez-Migallon Guzman, D. What's your diagnosis?: Limb Discoloration on a Depressed Tree Frog (Hyla cinerea). Lab Anim 34, 25 (2005). Https://doi.Org/10.1038/laban0305-25

Download citation

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Get shareable link

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative


Red-Eyed Tree Frog

Common Name: Red-Eyed Tree Frog Scientific Name: Agalychnis callidryas Average Life Span In The Wild: 5 years Size relative to a teacup: IUCN Red List Status:? Least concern

Least Concern Extinct

Current Population Trend: Decreasing

Many scientists believe the red-eyed tree frog developed its vivid scarlet peepers to shock predators into at least briefly questioning their meal choice.

Colorful Adaptations

These iconic rain-forest amphibians sleep by day stuck to leaf-bottoms with their eyes closed and body markings covered. When disturbed, they flash their bulging red eyes and reveal their huge, webbed orange feet and bright blue-and-yellow flanks. This technique, called startle coloration, may give a bird or snake pause, offering a precious instant for the frog to spring to safety.

Their neon-green bodies may play a similar role in thwarting predators. Many of the animals that eat red-eyed tree frogs are nocturnal hunters that use keen eyesight to find prey. The shocking colors of this frog may over-stimulate a predator's eyes, creating a confusing ghost image that remains behind as the frog jumps away.

Range and Habitat

Red-eyed tree frogs, despite their conspicuous coloration, are not venomous. They are found in tropical lowlands from southern Mexico, throughout Central America, and in northern South America. Nocturnal carnivores, they hide in the rain forest canopy and ambush crickets, flies, and moths with their long, sticky tongues.

Red-eyed tree frogs are not endangered. But their habitat is shrinking at an alarming rate, and their highly recognizable image is often used to promote the cause of saving the world's rain forests.


To Mate, This Frog And Her Sex Partners Work Up A Lather

This story appears in the March 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine.

These frogs put the "group" in "group sex"—and that helps them thrive.

Of all vertebrates, gray foam-nest tree frogs exhibit the most extreme form of simultaneous polyandry, or a female mating with multiple males, says behavioral ecologist Phillip Byrne of the University of Wollongong in Australia.

After a heavy rain swells pools in the African landscape, male frogs gather in poolside vegetation and call for mates, while females in the pools absorb water through their skin. When she's hydrated enough, a female heads for an overhanging branch. En route she is amplexed—gripped in a sexual embrace—by a male.

The joined pair climb to a nesting site. There the female discharges a watery fluid, whips it to a foam with her back legs, and puts in her eggs. At this point, says Byrne, up to 20 more males "line up in an orderly fashion by the female and vigorously and synchronously beat their back legs to help make a big wonderful nest," where they deposit their sperm.

The group spends hours pumping out gametes and bubble-wrapping them in foam that will shield growing embryos. Five days later tadpoles will wiggle free of the nest and plop into the water below.

Nearly all C. Xerampelina females mate with multiple males to produce one egg clutch, says Byrne—and that confers genetic advantages. His research shows that 20 percent more offspring survive from those females than from females that mate with just one male.

Unlike species whose males compete brutally to mate, these frogs' orgies are calm affairs, Byrne says. "By the females' letting lots of males sire offspring, it makes this a pretty relaxed business."

Gray Foam-Nest Tree Frog

Chiromantis xerampelina

HABITAT/RANGE: Tree-, crop-, and grass-covered lands in parts of southeastern Africa

CONSERVATION STATUS: Least concern

OTHER FACTS: Polyandry makes offspring more genetically diverse. That could help insulate C. Xerampelina from threats that have resulted in about a third of the globe's amphibian species being classified as threatened or extinct.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All In The Family: Maine Mother & Son Charged in Massive Drug Bust

-
Image
corso dog :: Article Creator Woman Hospitalized After Attack By 2 Dogs At Same Edmonton Home Where Boy Died: Lawyer UPDATE: On April 15, 2024, the City of Edmonton provided an update on the fatal attack. It said that prior to the deadly incident on April 1, "the city had no lawful basis to remove the dogs from the home." The city added that "all prior complaints about the dogs involved in this incident were investigated thoroughly and appropriate action was taken in accordance with the applicable legislation." The city also said a review found that its staff "acted appropriately in accordance with our standard practices and in compliance with the relevant legal constraints given the nature of past complaints and reports." A woman was hospitalized after being attacked in February by two large Cane Corso dogs at the same home where an 11-year-old boy was killed last week, the woman's lawyer told Global News. "I
Read more

Rare Frogs And Illegal Drugs - Palisades Hudson Financial Group

-
Image
Colombian conservationist Ivan Lozano has hit on a brilliantly promising strategy to protect his country’s rare and endangered amphibians. His plan: Flood the market with them. Lozano is not hunting rare frogs in Colombia’s Andean forests. He is raising them himself and selling them at prices designed to undercut poachers and smugglers. If he can raise the frogs cheaply enough, and in large enough numbers, he might manage to drive down the market price to the point that poachers no longer find it worthwhile to harvest and smuggle the creatures onto the black markets. Lozano told The Associated Press that his company also encourages collectors to breed their own frogs. Picture yourself as a poacher. If the government toughens the legal penalties and steps up enforcement, you will shrug your shoulders; legal risks are a basic cost of doing business. Since the demand for your product already exists among foreign collectors and other buyers, tougher enforcement merely reduces supply a
Read more

Burn scars, winter storms threaten rare and endangered species in San Gabriel Mountains - The Bakersfield Californian

-
Image
LOS ANGELES — Up until a few weeks ago, the West Fork of the San Gabriel River was one of the most abundant wildlife habitats in Los Angeles County, a secluded and rugged area defined by its steep peaks, lush canyons and mixture of rare and endangered species. Recently however, a team of federal biologists and forest rangers was aghast when it visited the stream following the Bobcat fire, which has burned more than 115,000 acres in the heart of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. Terrain that once resembled a High Sierra granite gorge now looked like ground zero after a nuclear explosion, and the usually clean mountain air was sharp with the stench of smoke. Particularly unsettling were the bare and ashen slopes that were now primed to dissolve under pounding winter storms. A heavy mudslide, experts said, could reverse decades of conservation efforts by inundating the last outposts for such federally protected species as the Santa Ana sucker fish and Southern California m
Read more