Native to Puerto Rico, coqui frogs are top of the vocal pops among amphibians. They live in a limited space in a few areas, so their populations can number in the hundreds or even thousands. During the mating season each male vies to out-croak the others. A single frog can generate sounds between 90-100 dB, as noisy as a lawnmower.
Frogs are ectotherms or “cold blooded” organisms, meaning their environment drives their body temperature. Temperature influences a coqui frog’s body size, and researchers think their size is key to the frequency of their calls and the pitch sensitivity of their inner ear. With global changes in temperature brought on by climate change, Narins wanted to go back and recreate their original study to see if changes in local coqui calls corresponded to changes in temperature.
However, the frogs themselves may not be undergoing physiological changes. Shrinking body size in response to climate change has been predicted in other studies, and the researchers were able to see a trend towards smaller frogs. But, it wasn’t clear if the observed shift in pitch and call length was a result of smaller frogs migrating further up the mountain to adapt to temperature shifts, or the result of new-found stunted growth in frogs living at specific elevations.
Picture Credit : Google