Southern Gastric Brooding Frog

Southern Gastric Brooding Frog

The Southern Gastric Brooding Frog, also known as the platypus frog, eats insects. This frog employed one of the most original life-history strategies in the animal kingdom – gastric brooding. Females would swallow their fertilised eggs and allow the young frogs to develop into tadpoles, and subsequently froglets, in her stomach. During the brooding period the female’s digestive process would shut down and her stomach would become so bloated that her lungs would collapse under the pressure, forcing her to rely solely on gas exchange through her skin for respiration. This species was restricted to elevations between 400-800 m in the Blackdall and Conondale Ranges in southeastern Queensland, Australia. The geographical distribution of the species was less than 1400 km2. This frog is mostly aquatic and has never been located more than 4m from water. This species is found rocky creek beds, adjacent pools, and rock pools in the rainforest and tall open forest with a closed under storey. It also lives along the rocky streams of the moist eucalyptus forest. It prefers rock pools and backwaters with leaf litter and rocks in which to shelter from predators, like white-faced herons and eels. In spring and summer, individuals were usually found in or at the edge of rock pools, either amongst leaf litter, under and between stones or in crevices around the edge. These frogs were also found under rock in shallow water in backwaters and also the main flow of permanent watercourses. Adult males tend to prefer deeper pools, whereas females and juveniles may move to newly created pools after rain as long as these pools contained stones and/or leaf litter. Searches of popular sites in winter only recovered two frogs and it assumed that the species hibernates in deep crevices in rocks or spaces between rocks underwater during the colder months.                                                                       Read More>>>