A Field Study of the Kansas Ant-Eating Frog, Gastrophryne olivaceaFitch, Henry S. (Henry Sheldon)
Science
A Field Study of the Kansas Ant-Eating Frog, Gastrophryne olivacea
Fitch, Henry S. (Henry Sheldon)
Frogs
The frogs may live in many situations such as this where they have been
overlooked. In the absence of flat rocks providing hiding places at the
soil surface, the frogs would rarely be found by a collector. The volume
and carrying quality of the voice are much less than in other common
anurans. Large breeding choruses might be overlooked unless the observer
happened to come within a few yards of them. Most of the recorded
habitats and localities of occurrence may be those where the frog
happens to be most in evidence to human observers, rather than those
that are limiting to it or even typical of it.
On September 20, 1954, after heavy rains, juveniles dispersing from
breeding ponds were in a wide variety of situations, including most of
the habitat types represented on the Reservation. Along a small dry
gully in an eroded field formerly cultivated, and reverted to tall
grass prairie (big bluestem, little bluestem, switch grass, Indian
grass), the frogs were numerous. Many of them were flushed by my
footsteps from cracks in the soil along the gully banks. In reaching
this area the frogs had moved up a wooded slope from the pond, crossed
the limestone outcrop area at the hilltop edge, and wandered away from
the woods and rocks, out into the prairie habitat. In this prairie
habitat there were no rocks providing hiding places at the soil surface,
but burrows of the vole (_Microtus ochrogaster_) and other small rodents
provided an abundance of subterranean shelter. In the summer of 1955 the
frogs were seen frequently in this same area, especially when the soil
was wet from recent rain. When the surface of the soil was dry, none
could be found and presumably all stayed in deep cracks and burrows.
Anderson (1954: 17) indicated that _G. carolinensis_ in Louisiana
likewise occurs in diverse habitats, being sufficiently adaptable to
satisfy its basic requirements in various ways.
BEHAVIOR
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