American bullfrog

LC - Least Concern

N5 - Secure

S4 - Apparently Secure

not listed

4″ to 6¾″ in length

A deep low note, usually described as a “rrum”, repeated once a second five or more times, the last two or three times stuttered. The calls can be heard up to a quarter mile away from early June through July.

Warm, still, permanent bodies of water, including lakes, ponds, and river oxbows and backwaters

7 to 9 years

Algae, plant tissue, organic debris

Adult and larval insects, spiders, slugs, snails, fish, turtles, small birds, small snakes, rodents, smaller frogs—any animal that can fit in its mouth.

Sources

4, 7, 14, 24, 29, 30, 73, 76, 78.

Common

Genus
In 2006 most North American true frogs were transferred from the genus Rana to the genus Lithobates by Frost et al. The change was controversial and was not accepted by all authorities. In 2008 and 2009 the change was rejected by Stuart, Pauly et al., and by other systematic reviews. In 2016, a consortium of Rana researchers from Europe, Asia, and North America showed that transferring the species to Lithobates caused problems of paraphyly in other genera. In that same year, Yuan et al. returned all North American true frogs to the genus Rana, using subgenera for all of the well-defined species groups within Rana.

Species
Most sources, including GBIF, ITIS, NatureServe, iNaturalist, and Amphibian Species of the World, use the name Lithobates catesbeianus. A few, including NCBI, UniProt, and AmphibiaWeb, use the name Rana catesbeiana. AmphibiaWeb suggests using the original name followed by the subgenus name in parentheses, in this case Rana (Aquarana) catesbeiana.

Location: Houston County