Chorus Frogs

Mapping the range of Chorus Frogs (the Trilling Clade of Pseudacris) in western New York State was Fred & Aleta's first field work together, and soon after that Fred and his late brother Paul added Chorus Frogs to the known fauna of Vermont, but Chorus Frogs had always been ubiquitous in southern Ontario.

Through the 1990s the eastern Ontario and Bruce Peninsula populations rapidly declined, the Vermont population died out, and we hosted a conference on this decline in 2001. In 2006 Fred & daughter Jennifer went back to historic records across southern Ontario, and Isabelle Picard, Jean-François Desroches, and Fred updated the COSEWIC report, documenting this decline in populations north and east of Guelph. The next year Emily Moriarty showed that the declining populations had the mitochondrial DNA of the northern & western Boreal Chorus Frog, Pseudacris maculata, though they had always been regarded as the "Western" or Midland Chorus Frog, Pseudacris triseriata.

In 2012 Fred & Aleta surveyed the northern limits of the range, documenting declines, struggling with spurious records based on trilling Peepers, and composing the song - https://soundcloud.com/aletakarstad/for-the-frogs/s-K1anI

Our Chorus Frog work continues with Vance Trudeau's lab's work on understanding habitat, and establishing a captive population that can be used for reintroductions.