Posted by:
batrachos
at Sun May 4 21:41:12 2008 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by batrachos ]
Yeah, Hovey Lake. The Vanderburgh County frogs were at Howell Slough.
As far as the mechanism goes- one frog wouldn't do it. H. cinerea, like most frogs, have externally fertilized eggs, so at least a male and a female would be needed to found a population. Other than that, hitchhiking adults are quite possible. Other possibilities are released pets, larvae in baitbuckets, etc.
However, it is also quite possible that the critters moved all that distance overland, up the Wabash over the last few years. It sounds far-fetched, I know, but the patterns of new populations I've been looking at certainly seem to indicate it. They don't just pop up randomly; they move upstream along big rivers in a distinct linear fashion. I've got pretty good data for populations in the Cumberland watershed; this area has been pretty intensively studied, so it's hard to believe they were just overlooked. I started the study when greens started showing up in some of my favorite haunts where I know they weren't present before. These are not glass lizards or something like that; if green treefrogs are present, you will not overlook them.
If I get the chance this summer I would like to sample along the Wabash and Ohio and see how far the greens have gotten.
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