The Corolla That Could

Not a typical field vehicle, my Toyota Corolla has managed to survive three previous years of field work. This year I've already put it through its paces, but, in turn, it has had two visits to the auto repair shop in North Carolina over the last two weeks. Hopefully yesterday will be the last visit before I make it back to Florida!

As part of my treefrog sampling this year I'm on the hunt for new field sites to collect tissues (toes) in order to better understand how the landscape influences population connectivity. Therefore, the more sites I can sample the more accurately I can assess the influence of different landscape features. Of course, this goal also means a lot of driving to scout new sites during the day and at night. Sometimes frogs will call in the daytime, but mainly a daytime view of the site helps me see good access points and whether the habitat looks suitable and actually has standing water. Then at night I can focus on re-visiting the most probable sites to listen for calling males. Here are a few photos from the field while I was in New Jersey last week. Even found an amplexed pair at one pond!

Can you find the frog calling in the midst of all these Smilax vines? 

Portable lab! Getting ready to measure body length (snout-vent length).

The amplexed pair of one male
and one female.

Toe clipping.

Often, scouting for sites is actually revisiting historic Pine Barrens treefrog sites. I've compiled a list of all historic localities from museum records, state heritage records, publications, and personal accounts. Sometimes these records are from within the last decade, but often they are much older. In North Carolina, Mike Sisson, who works for the NC Wildlife Resource Commission on Sandhills Gamelands, went out to scout these historic sites with me. Sadly, we had no success in the eastern part of the state. It may be the frogs are truly restricted to the Sandhills region of the Carolinas now. We were able to sample some new localities at least!

The story is very different in New Jersey, where large populations can more easily be found and there are many more records from the 90's and early 2000's. Last week I was very successful at sampling new localities in New Jersey for the first part of the week, then the promised rain didn't show so the frogs were pretty quiet. My mom even flew out to help with some field work.

Thanks to Paul Leakan for this photo!

I also gave a talk about my frog work as part of the monthly Pinelands Research Series at the Pinelands Commission in New Lisbon, NJ. It was well received and I was able to meet a lot of the people I've only contacted via email previously. Sharing results with other scientists and the general public is always a fun and enlightening experience, albeit stressful!

Another year, another field season!

For the last four years I have been studying the Pine Barrens treefrog (Hyla andersonii) for my PhD research at Florida State University. My research requires sampling of frogs in the field and then returning to the lab to analyze their DNA. As this species has a very strange distribution (see the map for all counties, in orange, where this species has been found), my field work occurs across the eastern USA from Florida and Alabama, to North and South Carolina, and even New Jersey. 

Thursday was a busy day while I finished packing and cleaning the car before driving up to South Carolina for the first night in the field this year.




Although the weather was just ok, we still found some frogs (even two females!). It was really exciting for me to find females that were gravid (filled with eggs) because it indicates a field site may actually have a breeding population of treefrogs. 

One of the males we caught was also a recapture from last year. I cut two toes from each frog I collect as a tissue sample from which I can extract DNA. The toes will grow back, but in the meantime they serve as a mark of capture so I can keep track of which frog is which from year to year. I also use the yellow leg coloration as a double-check. Each frog has a unique pattern, like a fingerprint.