Reproductive ecology and estimated population of green pond frog (Pelophylax fukienensis) at Pei-Pu in Hsin-Chu County

• Main Authors: HSIEH,CHIAO-YUN, 謝巧筠
• Other Authors: Chen, Shun-Chi
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/13660616800192905801

碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 自然科學教育學系碩士班 === 98 === Green pond frog (Pelophylax fukienensis) the medium-size frog that is widely distributed in the mountains of Taiwan below 1000 m above the sea level. It had been listed as a precious protected animal in 2008. I used toe-clipping and mark-recapture method to estimate the population of the green pond frog in a private ecosystem farm at Pei-Pu in Hsin-Chu County from May 2008 to August 2009. I caught 543 individual frogs totalized 1289 times during the investigation. There were 236 females, 183 males, and 124 young frogs among them. The averaged weight of female is 33.2g, and that of male is 26.3g; the averaged snout-vent length (SVL) of female is 6.6 cm, and that of male is 6.1 cm. The females’ SVL is 1.08 times longer than males’ SVL. The sex ratio of female and male is 1.32: 1. The breeding seasons are from April to July. They tend to load the eggs on the submerged plants. Usually it takes about 76.8 days for eggs to grow to young frogs. The averaged SVL of young frog can reach 6.4cm and the averaged weight can reach 24.8g after a year. The annual recapture rate is 52.5%. Among them, the male is62.6%, the female is55.0% and the young frog is 32.3%. They hibernate after being caught in October and the weight of the recaptured frogs reduced 6.7g in February of the next year. Those phenomenons such as most of frogs had fixed place to live, bigger ones ate small ones, and robbed when they were chasing the food, etc… showed that frogs may have territorial behavior.