Southern leopard frog, photographed at Allapattah Flats Wildlife Management Area, Palm City, Martin County, in March 2024.
As the saying goes, a southern leopard frog can’t change its spots. A southern leopard frog? Sure, why not? The principle is the same, and it’s our way of introducing Lithobates sphenocephalus, one of the most widespread and abundant frogs found in the Southeast.
Its native range extends as far north as New York and Iowa, south and west to Texas and eastward to the Sunshine State. Southern leopard frogs are an introduced species in Arizona, California (where they might have disappeared) and the Bahamas.
Southern leopard frogs are found in all 67 of Florida’s counties; the only part of the state where they’re absent is the Upper Keys.
They’re abundant and stable enough as a species that the IUCN rates them as least concern on its extinction scale.
Southern leopard frogs are fairly large, going between 2 and 3.5 inches long, sometimes reaching 5 inches, snout to butt. Their backs have numerous dark, round or oval spots — the inspiration for their name — on a green or brownish green background.
They have two prominent raised yellow or tan folds on the back that run from the eye to the groin. The tynpanum, or external ear, sits just behind each eye and under the fold; their round and have a distinct white spot in the center. The belly is white.
Southern leopard frogs are true frogs and as such, need to live in or near water — they are amphibians, after all. Almost any shallow body will do, freshwater or brackish, natural or manmade. Swamps, hardwood hammocks and pine flatwoods are favorite habitats. On ponds and lakes, they’ll hang out along the edges.
In the warmer, wetter months, however, southern leopard frogs will move away from water into drier habitats in search of food. To keep their bodies moist, an imperative, they’ll seek shelter in burrows dug by other animals or in thick, damp vegetation.
To breed, southern leopard frogs will return to water. In Florida, breeding season is November through March. Males sit along the water’s edge or float in shallow water, calling the ladies of the species with with a series of quick trills. Females will lay clusters of hundreds eggs and attach them to vegetation near the surface. These clusters sometimes can be as large as a baseball and include 1,500 eggs.
The eggs take seven to 10 days to hatch; the newly hatched tadpoles are only 20 to 25 millimeters long, less than an inch. They’ll grow over the next two or three months metamorphosing into southern leopard frogs. They’ll reach sexual maturity the first season after hatching; their typical lifespan is three years.
Favorite foods for southern leopard frogs include aquatic invertebrates like crawfish and insects. In turn, water snakes, raccoons and sunks are among the predators that feast on them. They avoid the maws of their hungry enemies by jumping into water and swimming away underwater. Southern leopard frogs are strong jumpers.
They are nocturnal animals and spend the day hiding in vegetation along the water’s edge.
Their scientific name, Lithobates sphenocephalus, is a mashup of greek words, the genus name meaning one that treads on rock and the species name meaning wedge-shaped head.
A quick taxonomic note: southern leopard frogs were, until relatively recently, scientifically known as Rana sphenocephalus. They are members of Ranidae, the family of true frogs.
Allapattah Flats Wildlife Management Area