Geographic Range: These frogs are found throughout most of eastern North America east of Kansas and south through eastern Texas. They are common to abundant throughout western New York and Pennsylvania, and may persist even in developed areas.

Habitat: They are most abundant in extensive tracts of wet forest, but can be found in oldfields, open marshes, and other habitats. They can often be found hopping through leaf litter or climbing in grass clumps or other vegetation, especially during rainy or wet weather.

Physical Description: This frog is small (2-3.7 cm), slender and pale (tan, brown, or gray) with slanting dark stripes on the back that usually cross to form an X. A dark line runs across the head between the eyes, and a second line runs from the nostrils through the eye to the tympanum. Their toes have slightly expanded adhesive pads and the toe webbing is reduced or absent.

Diet: The Spring Peeper is insectivorous, eating mainly small insects including ants, beetles, flies, and spiders. It is believed that food is chosen more by availability and size than by actual preference.

Reproduction: Breeding occurs from early March through early April in a wide range of habitats, including temporary or permanent ponds, marshes, flooded areas, or roadside ditches. These frogs may be among the earliest breeders in some areas (especially where there are no Wood Frogs or chorus frogs.) Calling is most intense at night, but it is common to hear them during the day, particularily when it is overcast or rainy. Males typically call from the water's edge, while partially submerged, or from a grass clump or other vegetation. One can often hear choruses well into June, and sometimes isolated males will call in late summer or fall far from breeding ponds.

Eggs: Up to 800 to 1000 eggs are laid in shallow ponds. The eggs hatch within 6 to 12 days and tadpoles transform during July.

The Spring Peeper is a Facultative Species and may be found in vernal pools, but can reproduce in other aquatic habitats where they are available.

Natural History: Usually found above ground in trees, shrubs, and herbaceous vegetation, but are not often encountered except during the breeding season, when tremendous numbers gather around shallow breeding ponds. They eat small arthropods like spiders, mites, pill bugs, ants and beetles. Tadpoles are largly herbivorous, feeding on algae and decaying plant material.

Vernal Pool Conservation

What you can do:

• Resist the temptation to clean up in and around vernal pool habitats. Leave trees, bushes, and understory vegetation, as well as brush, logs, and dead trees.
• Leave a buffer of natural vegetation around the pool for as great a distance as possible back from the edge of the pool's high-water mark. A buffer of at least 100 feet will help maintain water quality, but will do little to protect amphibians living around the pool. Vernal pool breeders require at least 300 yards of natural habitat around their pools in order to survive.
• Do not fill in the pool, even when it is dry, by dumping leaves or other debris in it.
• In areas with more than one pool, try to maintain travel corridors of natural vegetation between them. If some clearing is necessary, avoid drastic alterations that remove most of the trees and other cover. If habitat alterations are necessary, conduct these activities between November and March, when amphibians are less likely to be present. Activities done when the ground is frozen will cause much less damage to the soil than those conducted during warmer months.
• Avoid activities that inadvertently alter the movement of surface water (hydrology) of the upland area that drains into the pool. Digging ditches and similar activities can change runoff into the pool, thereby altering its flooding cycle.
• Do not dig into the bottom of the pool, even when it is dry, as this will disturb the non-permeable layer of soil that allows the pool to flood.
• Work with local conservation commissions and other interested individuals to identify and document vernal pools in your area.

  *Adapted from the Audubon Society of New Hampshire and the Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Program of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.

Photo by Tom Lautzenheiser.

A vernal pool is a temporary or semi-permanent body of water, typically filled in the spring by snow melt and spring rain, and holding water for two or three months in the spring and summer.

Vernal pools form in contained basin depressions, meaning that while they may have an inlet, they have no permanent outlet forming a downstream connection to other aquatic systems. They are typically small, rarely exceeding 50 m in width, and are usually shallow. While most are filled with meltwater and spring rains, others may be filled during the fall or with a combination of seasonal surface runoff and intersection with seasonally high groundwater tables. Typical substrates are formed primarily of dense leaf litter. While most vernal pools are found in upland forest, several types have been identified, including floodplain basins, swamp pools and marsh pools.

Periodic drying is a key feature of the ecology of vernal pools. Drying precludes the establishment of permanent fish populations, which would otherwise act as predators on the eggs and larvae of species that live or breed in the pool. While a typical vernal pool is dry during at least part of the year, others may contain some water throughout the year (or for several years), but a combination of shallow water, summer heat, winter freezing, and periodic oxygen depletion prevent the establishment of fish populations.

Terms:

Obligate Species: Species must live or breed in vernal pools.
Facultative Species: Species may be found in vernal pools, but can reproduce in other aquatic habitats where they are available.
Dorsolateral ridge: Lines or folds of skin (usually gold colored) along the upper sides of some frogs in the family Ranidae.
Intercalary cartilage: An extra piece of cartilage in the toes of members of the Hylidae (tree frog) family. It causes the end of the toes to have a “stepped-down” appearance.
Parotoid glands: Large skin glands that appear as swellings on each side of the back of the head of toads (family Bufonidae) and some salamanders.
Tympanum: This is the external ear drum visible on the side of the head of most frogs.

Gordon, S. 1999. "Pseudacris crucifer" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web
Accessed March 03, 2004 at https://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Pseudacris_crucifer.html

The Roger Tory Peterson Institute is a national, non-profit nature education organization with headquarters in Jamestown, New York, birthplace of world renowned artist and naturalist, Roger Tory Peterson (1908-1996). In collaboration with the Center for Applied Technologies in Education, the Roger Tory Peterson Institute has provided these animal profiles to offer a glimpse into the diversity of Vernal Pools in our region.