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The Natural History and Possible Extirpation of Blanchard's Cricket Marshall University Marshall Digital Scholar Theses, Dissertations and Capstones 1-1-2002 The aN tural History and Possible Extirpation of Blanchard's Cricket Frog, Acris crepitans blanchardi, in West Virginia Nancy J. Dickson Follow this and additional works at: http://mds.marshall.edu/etd Part of the Aquaculture and Fisheries Commons Recommended Citation Dickson, Nancy J., "The aN tural History and Possible Extirpation of Blanchard's Cricket Frog, Acris crepitans blanchardi, in West Virginia" (2002). Theses, Dissertations and Capstones. Paper 565. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Marshall Digital Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses, Dissertations and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Marshall Digital Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE NATURAL HISTORY AND POSSIBLE EXTIRPATION OF BLANCHARD’S CRICKET FROG, ACRIS CREPITANS BLANCHARDI, IN WEST VIRGINIA. Thesis submitted to The Graduate College of Marshall University In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Science Program by Nancy J. Dickson Department of Biological Sciences Marshall University Huntington, West Virginia April 2002 ABSTRACT “THE NATURAL HISTORY AND POSSIBLE EXTIRPATION OF BLANCHARD’S CRICKET FROG, ACRIS CREPITANS BLANCHARDI, IN WEST VIRGINIA “ by Nancy J. Dickson Blanchard’s Cricket Frogs, Acris crepitans blanchardi, historically occurred in Clay, Mason, Putnam, and Wayne counties of West Virginia. It has been since 1948 that a specimen was collected from these counties or any other in this state. The first objective of this study was to gather natural history information on A. c. blanchardi based on a population in Lawrence County, Ohio. The second objective of this study was to determine if A. c. blanchardi has been extirpated from West Virginia. The third objective was to determine differences between historical, potential, and current population sites based on vegetation sampling, predators, water chemistry, and environmental parameters including ultraviolet light penetration, relative humidity and air, soil, and water temperatures. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank a very long list of people. Most importantly I wish to thank my advisor, Dr. Thomas K. Pauley, for the opportunity to do this work under his guidance. Also, I wish to thank him for his patience with my endless questions about my work and in what direction I should take the study. There are very few people in this world that can tolerate a person like myself that loses or drops most of the equipment they use. I wish to thank my remaining committee members, Dr. Strait and Dr. Somerville, for entertaining dozens of my questions during the last few crazy weeks of writing my thesis. I would also like to thank the following professors at Marshall University for their assistance and advice: Dr. Dan K. Evans, Dr. Protip Ghosh, Dr. Tom Jones, and Dr. Donald Tarter. Everyone who helped me during the course of my study has been very accommodating and helpful when I showed up at their door, usually unannounced, with a notebook page full of questions. I wish to also thank Dr. Val Beasley and Jean Bettridge from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for providing me with literature from previous studies, Jeffrey G. Davis of the Ohio Biological Survey for his knowledge of Blanchard's Cricket Frogs, and Kathy Flegel of Wayne National Forest. I would like to thank Jessica Wooten for being my personal interlibrary loan system and statistician for the two months it took me to write my thesis. Thanks to the 2002 gang in 310 for their support and tolerating my impatience when I was typing away on, and usually hogging, the good computer in our lab. Thanks to my granny, Ruby Foster, for not being hard enough on me as a child when I brought her pocketfuls of frogs from her pond. If she had actually succeeded in making me believe they would give me warts, I may not have ended up studying one in college. Thanks to my mother who is always willing to listen to me ramble about my work even though she doesn’t understand things like “pitfall traps” and “GPS units”. Of course, I can’t leave out my cats, Cricket and Lucy, who tried desperately to keep me from typing my thesis by standing in front of the monitor or sprawling across the keyboard. I would like to thank my uncle, Dan Shinn, and my aunt, Nancy Newton, for their support and encouragement while I have been a graduate student at Marshall University. My greatest support during this work has been my boyfriend, Keith Johnson. We have had our ups and downs over the last five years, but nothing has compared to this trying time over the last few months while I have been writing this manuscript and completing my degree. I can’t begin to thank him for helping me through this. Finally, I would like to thank my financial supporters for this project: West Virginia Non Game Heritage Program, Wayne National Forest (USDA), and the Ohio Biological Survey. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..............................................................................................iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ...............................................................................................iv LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................vi LIST OF TABLES.......................................................................................................viii LIST OF SYMBOLS / NOMENCLATURE ................................................................ix CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION................................................................................... 1 BACKGROUND.................................................................................................................. 1 DESCRIPTION ................................................................................................................... 1 DISTRIBUTION.................................................................................................................. 2 NATURAL HISTORY.......................................................................................................... 2 DESCRIPTION OF STUDY SITES ......................................................................................... 3 CHAPTER 2. NATURAL HISTORY............................................................................ 6 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 6 METHODS AND MATERIALS ............................................................................................. 8 Morphology................................................................................................................. 8 Activity ........................................................................................................................9 Population size and movement.................................................................................... 9 Breeding and development........................................................................................ 10 Parasites ................................................................................................................... 10 Malformations........................................................................................................... 11 RESULTS ........................................................................................................................ 11 Morphology............................................................................................................... 11 Activity ...................................................................................................................... 11 Population size and movement.................................................................................. 12 Breeding and development........................................................................................ 12 Parasites ................................................................................................................... 13 Malformations........................................................................................................... 13 DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................... 14 Morphology............................................................................................................... 14 Activity ...................................................................................................................... 14 Population Size and movement ................................................................................. 16 Breeding and development........................................................................................ 17 Parasites ................................................................................................................... 19 Malformations........................................................................................................... 19 CHAPTER 3. DIET ....................................................................................................... 20 iv INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 20 METHODS AND MATERIALS ..........................................................................................
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