OMG OMG OMG Grey Treefrogs Hyla versicolor

[tattooed81]

I just got three Hyla versicolor from a friend at the Richmond SPCA. Someone droped them off tonight and they don`t even take them but they got my number. I`m so exctied and there allready talking to me It`s raining so they have not shut up since we left the SPCA It`s so ironic how we were just talking about them today. The only thing I`m worried about it that they are most likley wild cought.

[John]

Like Kurt said in the other thread, no one breeds these so they're definitely wild caught. How do you know they are versicolor?

[tattooed81]

You be the judge.

[John]

You can't tell by looking at them. Only ways to tell short of taking biological samples is to know where they were collected and what they sound like when they call.

[tattooed81]

http://fwie.fw.vt.edu/VHS/amphibians...%20track11.wav

[FrogFreak]

From what I heard...the call sounds like Chucky...which is the species Hyla Versicolor! Yours is a Gray Tree Frog!

[John]

The call is temperature dependent and under the right conditions the two species can sound almost the same, so unless you know how warm it was when you heard them call, it's still hard to say without a lot of experience.

[tattooed81]

They are most certainly Hyla versicolor. I spoke with the folks that brought them in. They cought them by a mud puddle wile it was raining last year. The only 2 gray tree frogs that are native to Virginia is Hyla versicolor and Hyla chrysoscelis. They cought them in the city of Rchmond. So it has to be Hyla versicolor because Hyla chrysoscelis are only found in the south east corner of this state. Unless we have an introduced species of grey tree frogs in the city of Richmond

[Kurt]

Hyla versicolor and Hyla chrysoscelis are the two species which John is refering to. Correct me if I am wrong, but Richmond isn't too far from Norfolk and Virgina Beach. I was there last summer, even though I did not enter Richmond, I did drive around it on the way to Virgina Beach. I kind of remember the ride not being to long after that.

[tattooed81]

i was wrong I could either have Hyla versicolor or a Hyla chrysoscelis I will bring him to a expert today

[Kurt]

Not sure that will help, as they are very hard to tell apart.

[tattooed81]

Hyla versicolor it is a Hyla versicolor took him to a herpetologist he identified him I thought it was Hyla versicolor

[tattooed81]

heres a idea

[Kurt]

heres an idea

What's the idea?

[tattooed81]

notice the yellow copes don`t have that do they anyway Denny down at Off The Ark exotic pet store is a herpetologist and he says it is defiantly Hyla versicolor

[Kurt]

I don't think the yellow flash colour is versicolor specific. John, care to weigh in on this?

[tattooed81]

here another. And I trust Denny he is an expert. I wish i had went to college to be a herpetologist he also said that cope`s can not be found in Richmond

[John]

You cannot visually tell these species apart from each other. Anyone who tells you that you can is frankly talking out of their *** - it's a myth. In fact, there are papers published on trying to discern these two species using physical characteristics and the only one that found anything discernible was one that measured body proportions (like length of one bone in proportion to another, etc, within each frog species) and they found that they could tell the frog species apart correctly a little more than half the time.

I've seen other people say one species it not as bumpy as the other, or one is greener than the other, etc - it's all bogus. I am lucky in that I collected my frogs personally from an area where I found Hyla chrysoscelis absent. Kurt is in a similar situation - only H. versicolor is present.

For what it's worth, if your frogs sound _exactly_ like the call you posted a link to here then it is probably Hyla versicolor and not Hyla chrysoscelis. The problem is that H. chrysoscelis' call is just a faster and higher pitched version of H. versicolor's, and temperature slows down and lowers the pitch of both calls.

[Kurt]

I cannot confirm, nor deny that versicolor is the only gray treefrog that can be found in the Richmond area. However I am more comfortable with the assumtion that it is the only gray species there.
Yellow on the thighs is not versicolor specific and some specimens actually have orange rather than yellow.

[John]

here another. And I trust Denny he is an expert. I wish i had went to college to be a herpetologist he also said that cope`s can not be found in Richmond

No offense to Denny but if he is using just visual criteria then he doesn't know much about Gray Treefrogs.