The Southern Leopard Frog is characterized by moist skin, a round snout, an irregular pattern of distinct, scattered, sometimes elongate spots on its back and sides with few or no flecks or reticulate patterns between them, and an unbroken, raised fold or ridge of skin on each side of the back running from behind the eyes down to the thighs. The head, body, and limbs are green, greenish brown, brown, or bronze, but some green coloration is normally present on the dorsum. The spots are dark gray, brown, or black and light-edged. The hind limbs are darkly banded. The raised fold or ridge on each side of the back is yellow or tan. The belly is white. Adult females grow to a larger size than males.
Adults normally 51-90 mm (2-3½ inches) in snout-vent length. The largest Kansas specimen is a female (KU 9462) from Montgomery County with a total length of 87 mm (3¼ inches) collected by Theodore E. White and Edward H. Taylor in August 1926. The maximum length throughout the range is 127 mm (5 inches) (Powell et al., 2016).
Found throughout much of the eastern third of Kansas, generally south of the Kansas River and east of the Flint Hills.
This frog is found in marshes, swamps, lakes, ponds, sloughs, rivers, and creeks. During the summer, it may wander great distances from water. There is evidently no home range or territory in this species.
The Southern Leopard Frog is active from March to October within a wide range of temperatures. It may be active during winter in the proximity of caves.
This frog retreats into the mud and leaves of lake and stream bottoms during cold winter months and remains inactive until the advent of favorable spring temperatures. Collins (1982) reported finding this species in leaves beneath a limestone rock overhang behind the splash zone in a small Ozarkian stream in Cherokee County on 16 March.
According to Caldwell (1986), the Southern Leopard Frog normally breeds in March and again in September in Kansas, weather permitting. During the breeding season, males begin to chorus, attract females, and mount them by clasping the females behind their front limbs. Each female may lay up to 5,000 eggs in numerous round clumps. Rate of development until hatching is dependent on water temperature and may take up to three weeks. The tadpoles metamorphose during late summer.
Southern Leopard Frogs may be active during day or night and are explosive breeders on rainy Spring nights. Southern Leopard Frogs breed primarily in the late winter and early spring. They have been observed calling in the Fall in Kansas, but are not known to produce clutches of eggs.
This amphibian feeds on a wide variety of insects and other small invertebrates.
The determination of the first record of this species in Kansas is difficult because up until Mecham et al. (1973) and Pace (1974) Lithobates blairi and L. sphenocephalus were lumped in with L. pipiens and that L. sphenocephalus is sympatric with Lithobates blairi for its entire range in Kansas except for southeast Cherokee County. They can be distinguished by calls but this was not recorded in the early literature. The best means to separate Lithobates blairi and L. sphenocephalus from the early literature records is their distribution where they are not sympatric (Lithobates blairi west of the Flint Hills and L. sphenocephalus in Cherokee County) and by reference to breeding/chorusing dates (L. sphenocephalus calling begins in March and peaks in early April, while L. blairi calls later, beginning in April, but not peaking until mid-May). Based on this, Gloyd (1932) reported chorusing at Pigeon Lake (Miami County) in mid-March, strongly indicating that the species present at that time were L. sphenocephalus.
The earliest recorded specimens (KU 9522-3 and KU 9627, 9630) from Kansas were respectively collected at Cow Creek in Pittsburg, Crawford County, in 1911 (day and month not given) and at Osawatomie, Miami County, on 17 June 1911.
The records in the Arkansas/Walnut River watersheds Cowley County (FMNH 25651) and Butler County (two KAMP observations [calls, not sighted]) are in need of verification.
References
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