River Frog - Rana hecksheri

• Diagnostic Features:
  • Size: 3 to 5.25 inches (80 to 135 mm)
  • Color:
    • Varies from Gray to Greenish Black to Dark Brown
  • Other:
    • Large frog
    • Conspicuous light spots on lips
    • Skin often rugose
    • Ventral surfaces medium to dark gray marked with light spots or short wavy lines; usually a pale girdle outlining groin
    • No dorsolateral folds or ridges
    • Young frogs with reddish eyes
• Natural History:
  • Habitat:
    • A frog of river swamps and swampy shores of ponds and bayous.
  • Behavior:
    • It is nocturnal. This frog is easy to approach.
  • Breeding:
    • Breeding takes place from April to August
    • Eggs thought to be deposited as a surface film
• Voice: Sonogram : Call ( Tattnall County )
  • Deep sonorous rolling snore; also a territorial snarling, explosive grunt
• Tadpoles:
  • Tadpole stage: probably 2 years
  • Tadpole size: up to 97 mm
  • Transformed size: 30 - 52 mm
  • 
  • tadpole larger, 25-110 TL; body grayish with finely freckled pattern, perhaps caused by integumentary glands; prominent to faint (fades as tadpole grows but usually visible) transverse golden band at mid-body; fins appear opaque white with intense black along entire margin (tail pattern persists in preservative); body somewhat depressed and fin with low arch; lentic and slow-flowing lotic sites, often in swamps, from southern North Carolina to southeastern Mississippi
  • 
  • high contrast yellow band at mid-body on black ground color; band fades with age but persists throughout ontogeny; fins clear and lack black margin of older tadpoles; tail muscle bicolored; summer breeder in lentic and slow-flowing lotic sites in Coastal Plain from southeastern Mississippi to southeastern North Carolina except for southern two-thirds of Florida peninsula
• Range:
  • In North America, this frog is found in the Deep South of the United States from South Carolina to East Texas.
  • In Georgia, it is found in the southern part of the state.

    

  • In Light Blue: Williamson, Gerald K. & Moulis, Robert A., Distribution of Amphibians and Reptiles in Georgia, Special Publication No. 3, Savannah Science Museum, Inc. Savannah, Georgia, 1994. Museum specimens
  • In Pale Blue: Williamson, Gerald K. & Moulis, Robert A., Distribution of Amphibians and Reptiles in Georgia, Special Publication No. 3, Savannah Science Museum, Inc. Savannah, Georgia, 1994. Literature only, no museum specimens.
  • In Green: Sound Recordings
  • In Yellow: From Both '94 study and Sound Recordings
  • In Magenta: Photograph, not found by '94, may or may not be sound record
  • In Medium Blue: Photograph and in '94 study, may or may not be sound record 
  • In Orange: County Record by other Herp Atlas Volunteers
  • In Red: US Distribution from various sources

May 25, 2008 - wwknapp@mindspring.com