Slides
1a - 6
7 - 14
15 - 22
23 - 30
31 - 38
39 - 46
47 - 54
55 - 62
63 - 70
71 - 78
These pages have 80 slides accompanied by a description. This is not a slide program but rather a collection of slides and information. If you would like to view a slide program assembled from these slides, go to the slide program index.
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15. Adult female wood frogs. The wood frog is rosey-brown colored, two inch frog with a dark mask around the eyes. The name derives from this animal's being a frog of the forest spending its life in the moist uplands. It only goes to temporary ponds in the spring to breed. |
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16. Wood frogs in amplexus. Wood frogs go to vernal pools in early spring. Males begin a "quack-like" chorus which attracts females. Mating involves the male clasping the female and releasing sperm as she releases her eggs. The season for chorusing and mating lasts only a couple of weeks. Recordings of the chorus or photographs of amplexus are evidence of breeding. |
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17. Wood frog egg masses. Each female produces a fist-sized mass of individual eggs. The mass is attached to vegetation in a location where it can be warmed by the sun, often in the northwest section of the pool. Wood frogs lay their eggs in communal groups producing large clumps of hundreds of egg masses. Eggs are evidence of breeding. |
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18. Hatching frog tadpoles. About a month after being laid, wood frog eggs begin to hatch. The filmy green (from algae) spent egg mass is still visible in the pool. The tadpoles spend a few days attached to vegetation or the used egg mass before they begin to swim about the pool. Wood frog tadpoles are evidence of breeding. |
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19. Wood frog tadpoles. Through May and into June, the abundant blackish wood frog tadpoles school in the shallow waters of the vernal pool. A net run through the water will often catch hundreds. These tadpoles are an easily captured form of evidence of breeding. |
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20. Wood frog tadpole with legs. By late June and early July, the wood frog tadpoles will have developed all four legs and begin to change into a terrestrial frog. During this time they will often jump about in the vegetation and shallow water of the edge of the pool. As long as they have a stub of a tail, these frogs are evidence of breeding. |
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21. Spotted salamander adult. The spotted salamander spends most of its life (perhaps 20 or more years) in the uplands surrounding a vernal pool. They are fossorial, living in burrows and under logs, coming out at night to feed. An adult salamander is not evidence of breeding, even if found in a body of water which could be a vernal pool. |
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22. Spotted salamander crossing snow. With the first warm rains of spring after the ground has thawed, the salamanders come out of hibernation and migrate to the vernal pool from which they developed. They may have to cross patches of snow and arrive at a pool still mostly covered with ice. |
