Amphibians
Gopher Frog
Lithobates capito · also called Carolina gopher frog, gopher toad
The gopher frog is a homebody with a landlord. It spends most of the year wedged in a gopher tortoise’s burrow, watching the world go by from the entrance, and only leaves when winter rain fills the temporary ponds it needs to breed.
Overview
Lithobates capito lives in the longleaf pine sandhills of the southeastern US coastal plain. It is a stocky, big-headed, spotted frog 6–11 cm long, and it is closely tied to two things: gopher tortoise burrows for shelter and isolated seasonal wetlands for breeding.
Life underground
It does not dig. It relies on the burrow of a gopher tortoise — or a stump hole or crayfish burrow — resting near the mouth and lunging out to grab beetles, spiders, and other frogs. Where tortoises are lost, gopher frogs usually vanish too.
The breeding rush
Warm winter rains trigger a mass migration to specific fish-free ponds, where the whole population breeds over just a few nights, males giving a deep snoring call, before returning underground.
Status
The gopher frog is Near Threatened and declining, as longleaf pine is lost and its small breeding ponds are drained or stocked with fish. Its cousin the dusky gopher frog is among the rarest amphibians on Earth.
Gopher Frog: common questions
Why does a frog live in a tortoise burrow?
The southeastern pine sandhills are hot, dry, sandy, and fire-swept, with little standing water and few natural refuges for a moist-skinned amphibian. A gopher tortoise burrow solves several problems at once. It stays humid and cool in summer and above freezing in winter, it is safe from fire, and its long tunnel offers protection from most predators. The gopher frog is one of more than 300 species recorded using these burrows, and it depends on them so heavily that where gopher tortoises have been lost, gopher frogs usually disappear too. The frog does not dig; it relies entirely on the tortoise, or on other ready-made holes.
What does explosive breeding mean?
It means the entire local population breeds in a very short window rather than spreading it out over a season. Gopher frogs spend most of the year underground and silent. When heavy rain falls in the cooler months and fills the temporary ponds, adults emerge and travel, sometimes over a kilometre, to a specific breeding wetland, often the one where they hatched. Males call, pairs form, and thousands of eggs are laid over just a few nights before the adults return to their burrows. The strategy floods predators with prey all at once and takes advantage of a pond that may only hold water for a couple of months.
What was the Supreme Court case about?
It concerned the dusky gopher frog, a separate species reduced to a few ponds in Mississippi. In 2012 the US Fish and Wildlife Service designated an area of Louisiana as critical habitat for the frog because it contained the rare type of ephemeral pond the species needs, even though no frogs lived there and the land would require restoration first. The timber company that owned it sued. In 2018 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that an area must actually be habitat before it can be designated critical habitat, and sent the case back to the lower courts to decide whether the Louisiana site qualified. The parties later settled.
How can you help gopher frogs?
The single most important thing is protecting and restoring longleaf pine habitat with the frequent low-intensity fire it depends on, which keeps the canopy open and the ground layer diverse, and conserving the gopher tortoise populations that provide shelter. Just as important is safeguarding the small, temporary, fish-free wetlands the frog breeds in; these are often overlooked in wetland rules because they are dry for much of the year, and they must not be drained, deepened, or stocked with fish. Head-starting, raising tadpoles in captivity and releasing froglets, is used to support the most fragile populations.