Every year, trillions of horny cricket frogs call to each other along the shores of ponds and slow moving streams wherever emergent vegetation grows. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQirydJRs7Q )This is an ancient sound of nature. Many mighty mastodons heard these mating calls, and the small frogs occasionally were forced to jump, barely avoiding the heavy steps of the lumbering giants. The 2 far different species shared a preference for the same kinds of wetland environments. Old beaver ponds in the process of succeeding to wet meadows hosted the highest density of mastodons and cricket frogs. The beavers and mastodons opened the forest canopy allowing sunlight to reach plant growth along the pond margins–ideal hiding spots for cricket frogs. The seemingly insignificant cricket frogs outlasted the more spectacular mastodons because they are capable of reproducing at a much faster rate.
Despite their annual abundance throughout North America for well over 5 million years, cricket frogs are recorded from just 10 fossil sites. According to the paleobiology database, the bones of cricket frogs have been identified from 4 sites in Texas, 2 in Nebraska, 2 in Kansas, 1 in Colorado, and 1 in Florida. Their remains are associated with Miocene fauna (25 million years BP- 5 million years BP) at 3 of the sites, suggesting cricket frogs have been around for quite some time. The amount of known fossil material for this genus compared with how many individuals lived during each generation is astonishingly low and is yet another example of how incomplete the fossil record can be.
Southern cricket frog (A. gryllus). They also come in a green phase with a stripe down their back.
Pine pollen washed into the pond just in time for the season’s first hatching of tadpoles. I wonder if the tadpoles feed on the protein rich plant food. I have seen ducks eating pine pollen.
During late March pond margins in Georgia are filled with cricket frog tadpoles. Click to enlarge.
There are 3 species of cricket frogs in the Acris genus: the southern cricket frog (Acris gryllus), the northern cricket frog (A. crepitans), and Blanchard’s cricket frog (A. blanchardi). Until recently, some taxonomists regarded these as 3 subspecies of the same species, but a study of cricket frog genetics determined there are species level differences between them. The southern cricket frog ranges on the coastal plain of southeastern North America; the northern cricket frog occurs from the piedmont region north to southern Canada. Blanchard’s cricket frog lives west of the Mississippi River, excepting 2 counties in Mississippi. This grand river serves as a barrier to the flow of genes, resulting in speciation among cricket frogs, spiny lizards, rat snakes, shrews, and some species of fish.
The cricket frogs belong to the tree frog family (Hylidae), but their ancestors left the trees and inhabited pond margins instead. The adults eat insects, but during the tadpole stage, they primarily subsist on algae. I hypothesize cricket frog tadpoles feed on protein rich pine pollen. The tadpoles seem most abundant when pollen washes into ponds in early spring. A diet that includes pollen may increase the rate of tadpole growth and development, improving the odds of surviving to adulthood. It would be interesting to test this hypothesis. Southern cricket frogs do breed year round, but there is a peak during spring and a slow down during winter.
Herons take a heavy toll of tadpoles and adults when they swarm near shore, and the frogs often fall prey to bass and catfish when the jump in the water to avoid the long-legged birds. Cricket frogs survive by constantly breeding, producing more frog than predators can catch and eat.
Reference:
Gamble, Tony; et. al.
“Species Limits and the Phylogeography of North American Cricket Frogs (Acris: Hylidae)”
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 2008
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