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How Common are Red frogs in England? |
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kevinb
Senior Member Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Location: England Status: Offline Points: 259 |
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Liz Heard
Senior Member Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Location: South West Status: Offline Points: 1429 |
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will
Senior Member Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 1830 |
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she's a beauty!
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Iminei
Senior Member Joined: 08 Aug 2012 Location: Dorset Status: Offline Points: 51 |
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I once had a very orange frog in our garden...I wondered whether she was a female in mating colours.. she was certainly fully developed.
I took a pic of her but still don't know how to post pics so here is a link to my picasa for those of you interested.....(I think you'll have to copy and paste .... sorry what can I say ...I'm a technoduce!)
https://plus.google.com/photos/115247778556127452254/albums/6137587633400083073?banner=pwa Sadly she died that winter (2010) after making a bad choice as to her hibernation home during the coldest winter down here for years, a butler sink.....it was not a happy time in the spring when it finally defrosted. |
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will
Senior Member Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 1830 |
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I'm sure someone has asked this before, but why are female common frogs often the brighter of the sexes I wonder? goes against sexual selection as they don't need to show off their colours to the males, and it makes them much more visible in their breeding aggregations amongst the grey/browns of the males...
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Liz Heard
Senior Member Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Location: South West Status: Offline Points: 1429 |
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I don't know Will but i was wondering the other day if red frogs were simply a 'throwback' that occasionally crops up again. Successful species that have been around a long time show the greatest variation.
Being red might not always be a disadvantage. Although nowadays our countryside is mostly a green (and brown) landscape, in the past, large-leaved European natives that shed red litter like Guelder Rose and the now rather scarce here, Wild Service Tree which, in Britain at least, mostly spreads by suckers rather than seed, may have been more patch-forming/widespread/common. There are also areas of the country such as around the aptly-named Redmarley on the Glos/Heres border where the soil is very red. Just a thought! |
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will
Senior Member Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 1830 |
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Hi Ben, yes, the throwback idea sounds good to me, as does red soil etc background. But of course it still doesn't explain the gender bias with a greater variety of colours being found in female frogs than the rather dull males. I think maybe it's to do with the fact that males spend longer in and around ponds especially in winter and very early spring when our ponds are a dull grey / brown and fresh vegetation has yet to appear? Having said that, a croaking male with a blue throat is pretty conspicuous and herons seem to have no problem finding them...
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Liz Heard
Senior Member Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Location: South West Status: Offline Points: 1429 |
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Hi Will, Sorry for the late reply...busy, busy, busy! Yes, that seems to make a lot of sense. Croaking males may be conspicuous but since males outnumber females at the pond so much, maybe the losses to herons etc doesn't make much difference overall. Of course where the soil is red, the water often is too. This one in Devon looked polluted but wasn't, and the colour was taken up by the swelling spawn too. Never seen groups of red tadpoles though (would be nice)! Elsewhere in Devon, i came across this remarkable rural stream that looked more like magma than water....... Once again though, it seemed perfectly healthy. There were no signs of death, disease or stagnation around. Edited by Liz Heard - 14 Aug 2016 at 10:52am |
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Caleb
Senior Member Joined: 11 Apr 2011 Status: Offline Points: 660 |
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I've seen similar looking red spawn at a pond in Durham on an old railway line. I assume there's some rusting ironwork under the ground that causes it, as the soil's not red. All 4 common amphibian species breed there, so I guess it doesn't affect their health in this case either.
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