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You are here: Home / Archives for Amphibians

Amphibians

A brief introduction to Marsh Frogs

April 11, 2022 by admin

Froglife volunteer, Victoria L, has taken the time to look into Marsh Frogs, one of the non-native frog species that you could come across in ponds and ditches across the UK, Most commonly spotted in South-eastern areas of England. 

What are Marsh Frogs and where do they come from?

Marsh frogs (Pelophylax ridibundus) are a species of frog which are native to continental Europe and Western Asia. They are not a native species in the UK and were introduced in the 1930’s from eastern Europe. They are Europe’s largest native frog species, growing up to 15cm in length. In the UK, they are most frequently found in the Southeast of England, particularly in marshland areas. 

Where do Marsh Frogs like to live?

Marsh Frogs are most prominent in the South-east of England due to having been imported from Hungary in 1935 and introduced to the Walland Marsh in Kent, already making it the main location of the species in the UK. Marsh Frogs prefer to spend most of their time either at the edge of or inside a body of water. They have an affinity towards wet, humid habitats such as lakes, ponds, and rivers. When they are not in the depths of these water bodies, they bathe in the sun.

This aquatic preference makes Marsh Frogs differ from other species, like the common frog, which travel around the landscape without much need to be in a constantly wet environment.

What makes Marsh Frogs unique?

Marsh Frogs may seem like any ‘typical’ frog, yet they have some unique features in plain sight. Marsh Frogs are bigger than the usual frog, usually being 13cm long but have the potential to reach 15cm. This contrasts with other frog species which are usually smaller, around 8cm. Another special identification detail about Marsh Frogs is that males have two grey vocal sacs on either side of their head which produce their call. Marsh Frogs have an interesting call which sounds like a cackle or a laugh, which can be produced by both females and males. Their calls travels far and can be used to attract mates.

Marsh Frogs have the ability to have hybrid offspring with other frog species, the green frog group. They can also easily adapt, for example them being able to survive in salt marshes.

Although Marsh Frogs are not native to the UK, their close relative, the pool frog, is. They belong to a group called ‘Green Frogs’ along with their hybrid, the edible frog.

What do Marsh Frogs look like?

They have large heads, males having the two grey vocal sacs on either side. Marsh Frogs also have textured skin along with folds on either side of their body. They come in a variety of colours, be it green, brown or grey.

What is the diet of Marsh Frogs?

Like any other frog, Marsh Frogs consume insects such as worms and spiders. Yet, they may also consume other frogs and even mice, contributing to the threat of native species in the UK.

What impact do Marsh Frogs have in the UK?

With Kent having a rise in the invasive, non-native, Marsh Frog population there has been a simultaneous decline in the populations of common frogs and native newts. Studies have shown that this is likely due to the Marsh Frog species preying on the common frogs and native newts while also bringing them diseases such as chytridiomycosis which they carry and is a threat to native species.

Other studies have shown a decrease in common frogs occurring in habitats which do not contain Marsh Frogs. This is likely due to the changes in habitats caused by pollution and climate change. This has led researchers to believe that the cause of this decline in common frogs is caused by both factors, which also affects other native species as well.

The affect of climate change on Marsh Frogs and other Herpetofauna:

Climate change also plays an important role on the future of Marsh Frogs and UK native frog species. Reptiles and amphibians are sensitive to the changes in precipitation of their environment, being two animal groups which are highly affected by climate change. As climate change and other severe events increase, research and monitoring of vulnerable species become even more important to drive effective conservation efforts.

Warmer temperatures have an unforeseen affect on herpetofauna, impacting their behaviour, reproduction and distribution traits. With climate change and global warming, this is currently affecting them.

Read more about Marsh Frogs.

REFERENCES:

https://insideecology.com/2018/01/23/invasive-non-native-species-uk-marsh-frog/

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/scc.2020.0027

Filed Under: Species Tagged With: amphibian, Amphibians, chytrid, climate change, frogs, green frogs, Hungary, invasive, marsh frogs, non-native, South-East England

What our animals are doing this month…

March 29, 2022 by Laura Hindle

Does it feel like Spring to you? It definitely does to us Froglifers and I think our amphibians and reptiles can feel it too.

In March we will have hopefully seen some common frogs and common toads but now that it is April, we will start to see more of our newt species. In Scotland you will be more likely to spot a palmate newt, this is because they like the acidity of Scottish waters. Adult palmate newts typically have no pigment under their chin, but do have a yellow underside. During breeding season, the males develop black webbing on their back feet and a filament at the tip of their tail. Palmate newts can often be seen in April and will be most active from late afternoon to midnight.

Another newt species you might spot is the smooth newt. This species is the UK’s most widespread and if you live in England, you are more likely to spot a smooth newt than a palmate newt. Adult smooth newts have a bright yellow or orange belly with black spots, and their skin is varying shades of grey or brown. In the breeding season males develop a wavy crest along their back which females will look at and judge when deciding who to mate with. The smooth newt will be seen moving towards the water in April during night-time and particularly after heavy rainfall. In April and May, the species will be at their highest in terms of numbers.

Remember to report your amphibian and reptile sightings (including eggs and spawn) on our free Dragonfinder app. You can download it here.

Filed Under: What our animals are doing this month Tagged With: Amphibians, april, Frog, march, Newt, palmate, reptiles, Toad, what our animals are doing this month

#StopSpawnSales- What you can do to help

March 8, 2022 by Ashlea Mawby

Froglife are running our #StopSpawnSales social media campaign this month to tackle the illegal practice of selling wild-caught amphibian spawn online. 

As most of us are aware, we are now in the peak of amphibian breeding season as our species are laying their eggs in ponds and pools across the country. This time of year also sees an unfortunate sharp rise in sales of wild-caught amphibian spawn (and even tadpoles) on online selling sites. 

We aren’t party poopers! We know how fascinating it can be to take spawn home, watch it grow and release the tadpoles/froglets back into the wild, but we want people to do this legally and safely! Not only is there a massive risk of spreading amphibian disease and viruses, invasive plants and invertebrates, but the sale of wild-caught spawn or tadpoles is an offence under The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. 

What you can do to #StopSpawnSales:

  • Never buy wild-caught spawn/tadpoles online! If you decide to raise frogspawn, it is crucial that all tadpoles/froglets/toadlets are released to the ponds where they were found to prevent spreading disease and invasive species
  • If you see wild-caught spawn/tadpoles for sale on social media or online marketplaces, please report it to the marketplace itself in the first instance
  • If further action is needed (i.e the posts aren’t taken down), please report it to your local Police Wildlife Crime Officer (with screen shots of the advert if possible)
  • Spread the word! like and share our social media posts and encourage those around you to #StopSpawnSales 
Photo Credit: David Palmer

 

Filed Under: Campaigns Tagged With: Amphibians, ebay, facebook market place, gumtree, spawn, stop spawn sales, tadpoles, Wildlife and Countryside Act

An Introduction to Froglife’s newest Trustee

January 27, 2022 by Emily Millhouse

London Tails of Amphibian Discovery (T.O.A.D) project manager, Emily Millhouse, has a chat with Froglife’s newest trustee, Xavier Mahele, to hear more about his passion for amphibians and reptiles.

Q: Who is Xavier Mahele?

I am a 19 year old ecology student and I really like frogs! 

Q: What is it about amphibians and reptiles that you like?

I love how enigmatic amphibians and reptiles can be. Turning over a log or looking into a pond or scanning sand dunes and healthland, you never know what you’re going to find. And I think putting on a head torch on a cool, moonlit night after heavy rain to look for amphibians hunting worms is one of the most exciting nature experiences there is! 

Q: What is your favourite amphibian, and why?

I am an avid fan of globose frogs. I’m very fond of the little round guys. So my top ones have to be the shovel nose frogs ,Hemisus, from Africa, the Nasikabatrachus purple frogs from India or the South American frogs Synapturanus and Elachistocleis! But my absolute favourite has to be the mexican burrowing toad, Rhinophrynus dorsalis! Their purple and orange colours are so ornate and males calling in their breeding ponds is hilarious, the way their entire bodies inflate and move when they sing! They are fossorial and spend a lot of their lives underground eating termites and chilling out which is a lifestyle I try to emulate. They are also the most evolutionarily distinct amphibian species, diverging 190 million years ago and the last surviving member of their family Rhinophrynidae!

Q: Why did you decide to get involved with Froglife?

I decided to get involved with Froglife three years ago, for my work experience in year 11, after reading about Froglife on the internet and using Froglife’s ‘Just add water’ guide to build my first pond. I had a great time helping out the London Tails of Amphibian Discovery (T.O.A.D) team with events, school visits and many hours of newt catching! I’ve been coming back ever since to help with all things herpetology!

Q: What’s your earliest childhood memory relating to nature?

I was very into prehistoric life when I was small and I often remember exploring the natural history museum, admiring the specimens, or looking for them on the beaches on the south coast. I also watched a lot of wildlife programmes when I was little. I was a big fan of Steve Backshall’s Deadly 60! 

Q: Did you have a favourite green space to see amphibians that you visited whilst growing up?

I spent many hours watching the newts and toads at my grandparents pond growing up. It was magical to see the shimmering shoals of toad tadpoles in the golden sunlight as the turquoise of a smooth newt floated past. It was exciting watching the zig-zagging hawker dragonflies and watching the little water slaters munch away at the detritus. And thanks to a heron a few years ago, I now know there are common frogs in that pond as well!

Q: As a young conservationist, where would you like to see the UK conservation sector be in 30 years time?

In 30 years time, I hope we’ve been able to restore and reconnect our degraded habitats, stem our further encroachment and allow everyone to have the opportunity to access nature rich areas. 

Q: What advice would you give to another young person who wanted to get into UK conservation?

Don’t be afraid to reach out to people, everyone is very nice and who knows what doors it can open up for you.

Q: What one thing would you encourage people to do at home to help amphibians and/or reptiles?

If you have a garden or community greenspace you’re involved in, think about putting a pond in, they can bring so much joy from wriggling tadpoles to the splash of frogs diving in. Once established and planted up, they look incredible and provide essential habitat for amphibians to breed in and have some respite from the heat in summer. If you’re feeling inspired after that, you can always add long grass areas and log piles to complement it and provide additional spaces for amphibians to feed and hide. In our increasingly fragmented landscape, we all must do our part to restore some habitats. Froglife has a great booklet called ‘Just add water’ which you can get in pdf form online which is a really great resource. 

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Amphibians, ecology, just add water, reptiles, student, Trustee, Volunteer

Parental care in amphibians: research findings from 1705 to the present day

November 30, 2021 by Roger Downie

Writen by Roger Downie, University of Glasgow and Froglife

Croaking Science does not usually urge its readers to study a particular scientific paper, but this is an exception. The paper is Schulte et al.’s (2020) review of research into amphibian parental care, a fascinating and essential read for all amphibian enthusiasts. Parental care is usually defined as ‘non-gametic investments in offspring that incur a cost to the parent’ and which provide some benefit to the offspring. Common examples are egg-guarding, and provisioning of young after hatching. Although some authors restrict discussions of parental care to actions that occur after fertilisation, others include activities like nest-building in preparation for egg laying. For example, we generally consider UK amphibians as lacking parental care: they deposit their eggs in water, then leave. But Schulte et al include the behaviour of female newts that wrap their eggs individually in leaves: this behaviour takes a substantial amount of time, so is costly to the female, and contributes to offspring survival by reducing predation.

Research into parental care tends to focus disproportionately on birds and mammals. Stahlschmidt (2011) in a review of what he termed ‘taxonomic chauvinisn’ found amphibian and reptile parental care much less studied than cases from birds, mammals and even fish. Schulte at al. redress this situation through a vast historically-based review, identifying 685 studies spanning the period 1705-2017. Early studies were mainly simply descriptive, but since 1950, there has been a greater focus on the investigation of explanations: what does parental care achieve, and what does it cost?

The paper’s Table 1 lists each of the parental care modes so far described: four in Caecilians; eight in Urodeles; 28 in Anurans. Some modes occur in all three Orders e.g. terrestrial egg guarding; others occur in only one Order e.g. wrapping of individual eggs in leaves by newts; foam-nest construction by many frogs. Overall, parental care is known from 56 (74%) of the amphibian Families. It is not really surprising that more parental care modes occur in the Anurans than in the other two Orders, since anuran species diversity is so high (Frost, 2021 lists 7406 anurans, 768 urodeles and 212 caecilians).

The first known report of parental care in an amphibian, remarkably, was by a German female natural historian and artist, Maria Sibylla Merian in 1705. Her book was mainly devoted to meticulous drawings of the insects she observed in Suriname, but she also included an illustration and observations on an aquatic frog, later named the Suriname toad (Pipa pipa), which incubates its eggs in individual pockets on its back: she saw the metamorphosed juveniles emerging from the pockets. I was lucky, on my first visit to Trinidad, to see this for myself. We captured a ‘pregnant’ female and the babies later hatched into the water, some still with tail stumps, others fully metamorphosed. Female biologists have been prominent in the study of amphibian parental care: in addition to Maria Sibylla Merian, Martha Crump (1996) and Bertha Lutz (1947) come to mind, as well as the four authors of the review under discussion.

Suriname Toad

Among the 500 or so papers that Schulte et al. cite, I was pleased to see two from the work we have done in Trinidad (Downie et al., 2001; Downie et al., 2005). These are about the Trinidad stream frog Mannophryne trinitatis (see Croaking Science September 2020), where the fathers guard the eggs on land then transport hatchlings on their backs to a pool where they can complete development to metamorphosis. Tadpole transportation is a common aspect of parental care in the neotropical families Dendrobatidae and Aromobatidae. We found that the fathers are choosy over where to deposit their tadpoles, avoiding pools that contain potential predators, and therefore contributing to their survival. The search could take up to four days. We wondered how costly this might be to fathers: to our surprise, transporting a relatively heavy load of tadpoles did not appear to reduce the fathers’ jumping ability, nor did it prevent them from finding food. However, four days away from their territory must count as at least some cost in terms of lost mating opportunities.

A male Trinidad stream frog, Mannophryne trinitatis transporting his tadpoles (photo credit: Joanna Smith)

Schulte et al. conclude with a timely plea for a revival of teaching and research in natural history. As they say, natural history observations – on the distribution, numbers and habits of organisms- form the basis of all new ideas and hypotheses in ecology and evolutionary biology. They note that there remain many amphibian species whose habits are poorly known and that many novel observations have been made on parental care in recent years. They therefore expect that much could be discovered, as long as effort is put into new field work. Over 20 years ago, I wrote lamenting the modern status of natural history (Downie 1997, 1999), and Schulte et al. report that the loss of organism-based teaching and research is widespread. In the UK, there are moves to create a natural history curriculum, to complement biology in schools. I feel that it is much needed.

References

Crump (1996). Parental care among the amphibia. Advances in the Study of Behaviour 25, 109-144.

Downie (1997). Are the naturalists dying off? The Glasgow Naturalist 23 (2), 1.

Downie (1999). What is natural history, and what is its role? The Glasgow Naturalist 23 (4), 1.

Downie et al. (2001). Selection of tadpole deposition sites by male Trinidadian stream frogs (Mannophryne trinitatis; Dendrobatidae): an example of anti-predator behaviour. Herpetological Journal 11, 91-100.

Downie et al. (2005). Are there costs to extended larval transport in the Trinidadian stream frog (Mannophryne trinitatis, Dendrobatidae)? Journal of Natural History 39, 2023-2034.

Frost (2021). Amphibian species of the world : an online reference. Version 6.1 (accessed 29/9/21). Electronic database accessible at http://amphibiansoftheworld.amnh.org/index.php. American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA.

Lutz (1947). Trends towards non-aquatic and direct development in frogs. Copeia 1947, 242-252.

Schulte et al. (2020). Developments in amphibian parental care research: history, present advances, and future perspectives. Herpetological Monographs 34, 71-97.

Stahlschmidt (2011). Taxonomic chauvinism revisited: insight from parental care research. PLoS ONE 6, e24192.

Filed Under: Croaking Science Tagged With: Amphibians, Croaking Science, Croaks, eggs, parental care, tadpoles

What our animals are doing this month….

November 29, 2021 by Mirran Trimble

December is a quiet month for British amphibians and reptiles. All of our native species brumate during the winter, meaning they are dormant with occasional periods of foraging during warmer spells. Amphibians and reptiles overwinter in different habitats, but warm, safe spots such as log piles and compost heaps are often popular choices.

Male common frogs may choose a riskier overwintering strategy. They sometimes decide to overwinter at the bottom of a pond, buried into the mud. This can be a good option as they are unlikely to be disturbed or predated upon, however it can be very dangerous if oxygen levels get too low. Frogs can absorb oxygen through their skin underwater and can tolerate very low levels of oxygen, but they will die under anoxic conditions. However, if there are native oxygenating plants in the pond, then this should ensure sufficient oxygen flow.

Common frogs can also survive if a pond partially freezes, but not if it freezes entirely. As a general rule, ponds with a maximum depth of at least 60cm are safe, but any shallower and there is a high risk of it completely freezing over.

Filed Under: What our animals are doing this month Tagged With: Amphibians, brumate, freeze, frogs, hibernation, overwintering, ponds, reptiles, Winter

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