Northern Leopard Frog / Grenouille léopard
Lithobates pipiens
Summary 4
The northern leopard frog (Lithobates pipiens) is a species of leopard frog from the true frog family, native to parts of Canada and United States. It is the state amphibian of Minnesota and Vermont.
Distribution and habitat 5
Rana pipiens is a wide-ranging species. It can be found across a broad swath of territory from the Hudson Bay south to northern Virginia, and to the west as far as southern British Columbia and eastern Washington and Oregon. In the west its range extends south through Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. It exists in scattered populations in some areas of California and Nevada, and has been introduced in other areas of California. In the western U.S. its range is now greatly fragmented and lacks confirmation in recent years. (Stebbins 2003).
R. pipiens lives in a wide variety of habitats: grassland, brushland, and forest. It is the most cold-adapted of all the leopard frogs, and can be found up to an elevation of about 11,000 feet (Stebbins 2003). It can also be found in agricultural lands and in developed areas such as golf courses (Hayes et al. 2002). It prefers to live where there is a permanent body of standing or slowly flowing water, and among the aquatic vegetation of such places (Stebbins 2003).
Sources and Credits
- (c) Denis Doucet, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Denis Doucet
- (c) 2006 James H. Harding, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?seq_num=191740&one=T
- (c) 2007 Frank Teigler, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?seq_num=227722&one=T
- (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithobates_pipiens
- (c) AmphibiaWeb © 2000-2015 The Regents of the University of California, some rights reserved (CC BY), http://eol.org/data_objects/34272120
