Frogs spawn

Caleb wrote: There's a whole chapter on this in Maxwell Savage's book on the common frog. His conclusion was that it's probably algal growth that triggers them to spawn, which itself depends on a bunch of factors including rainfall, sunlight, and temperature.  It's worth reading for his reasoning as to why various factors (especially temperature) can't alone explain the spawning date. The whole book can be read on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/ecologylifehisto00sava/mode/2up

Put the camera on the pond and can see three frogs as I type this, quite active too, swimming about.

I would imagine the survival prospects of that spawn are pretty low, what triggers the laying, does it have to be a cold spell followed by a period at a certain temperature so they think Spring has arrived, or is totally random and just depends on a male and female meeting at the right time?

Edited by chubsta - 27 Jan 2020 at 10:12am

Just been cutting the vegetation back round my smallest pond to allow the sunshine onto the water. When things had settled down (I netted out some duckweed and leaves too) I saw a large overwintering tadpole lying by the pondside in the water. It certainly had one set of legs, but it was hard to get a clear view. I know there are a few that have overwintered in there. Will be interesting to see if they have a spurt and fully develop like yours did.

Edited by Suzy - 10 Jan 2020 at 12:51pm

Two more of the last six tadpoles turned froglets.
These were laid in February, bought inside in October when they never developed, no change till late December when 6 out of 9 have suddenly decided to complete their development in the past week.



Edited by lalchitri - 28 Dec 2019 at 1:28pm