Amphibian habitat is being destroyed: part 1

Drought? Development? Climate changes? Other? Or all of those causes listed? I don’t have the ability to assign a cause or causes, but I do know that over the last six decades (since I have been active in the field), the southernmost ranges of at least two amphibian species -- the marbled salamander and the ornate chorus frog -- have been dramatically altered.

In the range maps of the 1958 edition of A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern North America, Roger Conant, meticulous for accuracy, showed ornate chorus frogs, Pseudacris ornata, south along both coasts of Florida to the latitude of Lake Okeechobee.

Since I had never found this frog south of Bradenton on Florida’s Gulf Coast (and had never looked for it on the Caribbean Coast), I queried Mr. Conant about the statement made that the frog was found “through most of Florida."

He assured me that he had seen examples from the latitude of Lake Okeechobee. Since in their 1949 Handbook of Frogs and Toads Wright and Wright had indicated that ornate chorus frogs were found throughout all of mainland Florida, perhaps the range had already shrunken dramatically by 1958. Today, I assure you, it has now shrunken even further with Duval, Alachua, and Levy counties seemingly being the southernmost range extremes in 2013. Until 2010, coastal rains had been a bit more regular than inland rains, and breeding choruses of ornate chorus frogs were still heard in Levy County, Florida. Sadly those ephemeral sites were dry in 2011, 2012, and during early (the breeding season for ornate chorus frogs) 2013. We are hoping that when the waters are again replenished, these ephemeral sites will once more resound with the strident peeping of this, the southeast's most beautiful chorus frog.

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.