General Description
Splash! What’s that? You look but only see water rings. Upon closer inspection there’s a cluster of black and white eggs at the shallow edge of a pond. You hear five faint chucking sounds and a low pitched grating noise. There it is! It’s a frog sitting on a partially submerged rock. The frog’s golden eyes shine against a dark “mask" and it has white markings distinctively lining its lips. The body is brownish-green with inky black spots and small bumps on its back and sides. Then you notice a flash of cream-yellow, the pale color of honey, on its long, stretched-out hind legs as it hops away. You’ve just spotted a Cascades frog.
The Cascades frog (Rana cascadae) is named for its home region. Rana is Latin for frog and cascadae refers to the Cascade Mountains. However, this species also occurs in the Olympic Mountains of northwest Washington and Trinity Mountains of northern California.
About the size of a small child’s hand (4-7.6 cm long), these montane (mountain dwelling) amphibians are usually found above 730 m (2,400 ft) elevation in wet meadows, damp forest bogs, lakes, ponds, and small streams. They rely on clean and permanent water sources for survival.
Behavior and Feeding
Cascades frogs are most active from May to October. In winter, they burrow into muddy bottoms of lakes or ponds to hibernate. Once the snow melts, males begin calling during the day, but mostly at night. They call both above and below the water surface to find mates and announce their territory to other males.
Adult frogs are generalist predators that eat a variety of invertebrates such as water striders, caddisflies, mayflies, crane flies, ants, grasshoppers, and spiders. They hunt and forage at the water surface, in wet meadows, and other aquatic habitats. Tadpoles feed at the bottom of waterbodies on detritus and microorganisms such as algae and fungi.
Like other frogs (and amphibians) they are poikilothermic ectotherms meaning their body temperature fluctuates with and is the same as the environmental temperature. They move around among habitats to optimize their body temperature.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
