Rana sylvatica

During our trip to McCarthy and Kenicott I was able to come in contact with the wood frog. This amphibian lives in forests and breeds in freshwater pools. This organism is found throughout throughout North America, Canada, and Alaska. Wood frogs feeds on many small invertebrates that can be found on the ground floor of the forests they inhabit. Wood frog tadpoles are omnivores eating dead plant matter and algae; as well as cannibalizing other wood frog eggs and larvae. Larger animals such as blue heron and lynx are common predators for the wood frog since the amphibian makes for an easy snack. The wood frog are brown, tan, or a rust color with black masking around their eyes. They can grow to almost three inches in length and female wood frogs are bigger that the males. Wood frogs mate in early spring and their mating calls are often mistaken for ducks since the frogs make a similar quacking sound. The frogs breed in pools rather than permanent bodies of water to help protect the offspring from being eaten by fish and other dwellers of permanent water habitats; however to balance this concept the wood frog larvae will die if the do not complete their metamorphosis before the pool drys out. Females will lay rafts that contain hundreds of eggs. The males will sit on the females back in order to properly fertilize the egg rafts. Depending on the temperature the eggs should hatch in ten to thirty days. Heres an interesting fact, wood frog females will often congregate in a one pool and lay massive amounts of eggs, it has been documented that almost two-thousand eggs have been laid in a single pool. Even though the wood frog is on the low priority list amphibians world wide are endangered of becoming extinct due to the devastation of wetland breeding grounds.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_Frog
http://www.uri.edu/cels/nrs/paton/LH_wood_frog.html
http://www.torontozoo.com/adoptapond/frogs.asp?fr=10