Cricket Frog Variations (3)

11.

12.

A good place for Cricket Frogs...

Frog #11 is another mud bank frog, with some dark, wide bars across the back legs.  Note that the bars are only bars when the legs are folded in the rest position - part of the pattern is on the thigh, the other matching part on the tibia.

Paddling along the Cache, I spotted the little frog #12 in a backwater filled with duckweed.  The bright green dorsum makes for excellent camouflage in this case.

It is said that genetic mutations that produce small changes are the least likely to be harmful, and therefore are more likely to be preserved.  I suspect that color variability in Cricket Frogs constitute a small change that benefits the species as a whole - a wide variation of color and pattern allow these frogs to populate and survive in different habitats.  I also wonder - does the variation prevent a predator from developing the ability to 'pick out' Cricket Frogs?  I would be interested to know if the variations I see in southern Illinois also are present elsewhere -  northern Illinois, for example, where there are perhaps fewer habitat choices.

While it continues to hold fast among the lakes, rivers and ponds of southern Illinois, the Cricket Frog is becoming rare over much of the northern parts of its range.  There are a number of suspected causes - pesticide and herbicide runoff, a detiorating ozone layer, even something as simple as the lack of shallow water vegetation, where these frogs breed.

In the meantime I will continue to look for and photograph these little frogs at every opportunity, and add them here!