Passport to Texas

Houston Toad singing a song for the ladies.

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This is Passport to Texas

Amphibians are a remarkably unique life form.

Texas State University Biologist Dr. Mike Forstner says in case you ever wondered how amphibians, romance one another, he can help.

Amphibian or amphibios is a two-stage life. Those dual lives reflect water and land. When we think about the mating process or the management of the toad we have to take both in account the water and the land. All frogs and toads call. They make a unique advertisement call.

You have probably heard male leopard frogs and bullfrogs advertising their interest in meeting members of the opposite sex without even realizing it. And if you were to find yourself in Central Texas, traveling through Bastrop…

… further into the forest in Bastrop, we begin to hear a high-pitched trills that lasts a long time, up to 15 seconds for the Houston toad.

Those calls allow the females to recognize the correct male for their species, and since the fire, we are beginning to hear a few more of these calls.

And the females will hop toward the male call that they think is the most attractive. So there is female choice- not very different from what happened in the human world.

Find more information about amphibians on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

That’s our show…Funding provided in part by Ram Trucks. Guts. Glory. Ram

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2017 at 12:00 am and is filed under amphibians, Freshwater, frogs and toads, Texas Nature Trackers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.