Wheatbelt Frog

Neobatrachus kunapalari Mahony & Roberts 1986

Species Info Card | Updated 1 decade ago

A moderate-sized robust frog (to 6 cm) with relatively short limbs and protruding eyes with a vertical cat-like pupil. Generally has a uniform back pattern ranging from pale straw to dark khaki with many irregular pale and dark brown blotches that usually have indistinct margins. The toes are moderately to extensively webbed. Breeding males have large nuptial spines on the thumbs and small black spines on the back.

Breeding Biology

Breeding is in autumn and early winter or after summer rains. Mating occurs in milky pools in which tadpoles are usually hidden from view. Thousands of Wheatbelt Frogs can be seen on warm summer nights after a thunderstorm. The rain brings them out of their burrows, and large choruses are a distinctive feature of warm rainy nights in the wheatbelt.

Eggs are laid in a continuous strings that settle to the bottom of a pool or creek. Up to 500 eggs may be laid at a time. There is nothing known currently about the tadpoles.

Habitat

Usually found on clay soils, where breeding ponds with opaque water form after summer and autumn thunderstorms.

Etymology

The name means 'frog' in the Gugadja language.

General

The Weatbelt Frog is very similar in appearance to the Shoemaker Frog, and was only classified as a new species in 1986 on the basis of its call and genetic makeup. These two species are very difficult to separate on the basis of their appearance. The Wheatbelt Frog is one of the few frog species in which multiple male matings have been observed.

This is a 'tetraploid' species, with double the number of chromosomes compared to normal Neobatrachus species.

South-west and arid zone from Yuna southwards, east to the Rawlinson Range and extending patchily to the south coast.

The call is a distinctive long, low trill that can be heard from some distance away.