Class: Amphibia Order: Anura Family: Ranidae Genus: Lithobates Species: Rana catesbeiana
In my term paper I would like to talk about the American Bullfrog population in the Great Lakes region, its evolutionary history, its place in the phylogenetic tree, ancestors (Gerobatrachus Hottoni, proto frogs), and nearest relatives (salamanders and caecilians), how the species has spread around the world, how it interacts with its environment, what role it plays in the ecosystem, its role as an invasive species and the threats that it poses as such, and finally argue that the main concern about the species should be safe ways to keep populations under control without harming the species or ecosystems around it. I chose to research and write about the Great-Lakes-area American Bullfrog because I began volunteering with a frog call monitoring program at the Lincoln Park Conservancy, but here is a bit of my preliminary research that may interest you as well:
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Its native range extends from the central and eastern United States up into Southern Canada. But the frogs are now found from Nova Scotia to Central Florida, from the East coast of the U.S. to Wisconsin, across the Great Plains to the Rockies, as far west as California and Mexico, and even places like Hawaii, the Caribbean, South America, Europe and Asia. It appears the species was introduced from its original habitat in North America in the early 1900s in Colorado and California and the introduction appears to have been accidental. Evidence suggests the frogs could have been introduced through trout streams and lakes during the Colorado Divisions of Wildlife fish stocking operations in the early 1900s, as bullfrogs have been known to invade fish hatchery ponds and leave their larvae to be stocked into ponds along with the