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Leaping to frog's rescue

Herpetologist plans a last-ditch effort to determine if species has disappeared from Long Island habitat

BY BRYN NELSON | STAFF WRITER

June 1, 2005

At dusk, a peculiar chorus of chuckles once flowed from places like Montauk and Smithtown and Flushing. Since the early '90s, though, researchers have heard only silence from Long Island's Southern leopard frogs.

A herpetologist now hopes to mount a last-ditch effort to determine whether the once-common frogs have hung on in seclusion or have followed the rattlesnake and cricket frog in vanishing from the Island.

"They're an important part of the original diversity that was present on the Island, and to observe the loss of any species idly is just a shame," said Jeremy Feinberg, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service herpetologist based at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Feinberg hopes to use old records, tips from naturalists and residents, and field expeditions to discover any remaining populations.

Survivors could be placed in breeding programs to boost their numbers, and stocks from New Jersey - home of the closest known populations - could be used if reintroduction is deemed necessary.

Used in labs and high school dissection classes around the country, the spotted frog once thrived here, the northern-most boundary for the traditionally southern species.

Andy Sabin, president of the South Fork Natural History Society Nature Center in Bridgehampton, recalls finding them in abundance in the Montauk area as recently as the 1980s.

"In the '80s, when I first started finding them, the call was deafening, there were so many of them," he said. By the early 1990s though, the frogs had declined to the point where he was finding only a few, then just one - and then none at all.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation lists the frog as a species of special concern, but Feinberg contends little has been done to verify the frog's presence since it was last documented by Sabin. The demise of the annual frog-calling survey on Long Island due to flagging interest has only compounded the uncertainty, and Feinberg said similarly spotted pickerel frogs can fool untrained eyes.

Closer inspection can reveal some key differences, however: Southern leopard frogs have cream-colored inner thighs and a white spot in the center of the tympanum, a circular disc behind each eye. A pickerel frog has no such spot, and yellow-colored inner thighs.

Anyone with information about remaining Southern leopard frog populations can reach Jeremy Feinberg at 631-344-6125 or jfeinberg@bnl.gov.