Invasive frogs give invasive birds a boost in Hawaii

[NickB79]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171129090421.htm

Puerto Rican coqui frogs were accidentally introduced to Hawaii in the 1980s, and today there are as many as 91,000 frogs per hectare in some locations. What does that mean for native wildlife? Concerns that ravenous coquis could reduce the food available for the islands' native insect-eating birds, many of which are already declining, spurred researchers to examine the relationship between frog and bird populations -- but their results, published in The Condor: Ornithological Applications, weren't what they expected.

Working at fifteen sites on the island of Hawaii in 2014, Utah State University's Robyn Smith, Karen Beard, and David Koons determined whether coquis were present at each site by listening for their calls at night and then estimated coqui density in invaded plots through a visual search. Bird surveys at all sites recorded 20 species, of which only 5 were native. To the researchers' surprise, native birds showed no response to coqui density or presence, but three of the nonnative species were more abundant in plots with coqui. The overall abundance of nonnative birds ranged from an average of 57 birds in coqui-free plots up to 97 where coqui density was highest.

My wife warned me about coqui frogs before we went to see her family in Puerto Rico. They are small, but when you have thousands of them all singing at once in the backyard, they are loud enough to keep you up at night. 91,000 frogs per hectare would drive a man insane from lack of sleep!

[wasupaloopa]

1. Those frogs make noise all night long

It sounds like they are saying Murphy.

They are a pain in the butt if you sleep with windows open.