An adult Fringed Leaf Frog, Amazonian Peru.
The frogs were there. There was no question about their presence in my mind. To find them we would be dependent on Lady Luck and suitably rainy nights. Would this be the night?
It had looked stormy for most of the day, had clouded entirely by late afternoon, and had begun raining in the torrents so typical of the aptly named Amazonian (Peru) rainforest by early evening. In herper’s terms, it looked like it was going to be a great night for amphibs—especially the hylids— that were so quiet between the storms that they seemed absent.
By the time it was fully dark, puddles had formed on the forest floor and frog-voices were echoing from treetops, tree hollows, puddles, and vegetated areas of the flooded oxbows.
Although I recognized many of the anuran calls, I was listening intently through the rain for a soft burping call, one with little carrying power.
But even if I couldn’t hear it, if I could by chance actually see the frog, I’d know it. The species? Cruziohyla craspedopus, the fringed leaf frog, a hylid that, unless breeding, was said by many to not voluntarily leave the high overhead leafy canopy (this thought may now have been contraindicated).
Adults of this leaf frog, moderately large and spectacularly pretty, are usually leaf-green dorsally. Metamorphs and juveniles are grayish. The continuity of the dorsal color is broken by irregular, pale, blue-grey lichenate blotches. The sides and inner surfaces of the legs are yellow with black vertical bars. The belly is yellow. The tarsi and outer toes are strongly and unevenly fringed. From this feature the common name is derived.
This remarkable frog descends to lower branches when breeding. Eggs are deposited in water holding concavities in fallen trees but may also be placed in ground-level puddles near a fallen tree.
Although we walked late into the night, startled by potoos and berated by owl monkeys, our goal frog eluded us. But the next day one of the hikers with us suddenly stopped as we were passing through a patch of broad-leafed vegetation, pointed, and asked “what kind of frog is this?”
And there flattened tightly, eyes closed, against a Heliconia leaf. was a beautiful adult fringed leaf frog.
All was well with the world. Continue reading “A “Fanciful” and Fancied Treefrog” …read more
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