Pet Sounds

As it happens Louisiana has a heretofore unknown resident.

It is four-legged, a leaper, about one-inch long and a distinct sound which in part provides its name - the Cajun Chorus Frog, seen below.

And until recently nobody had discovered its mere existence, or established that it is known to exist in western Mississippi, all of Louisiana and Arkansas, eastern Texas and Oklahoma and extreme southern Missouri.

It took the combined efforts of Emily and Alan Lemmon, Dr. Joseph Collins and David Cannatella to jump through the hoops - DNA analysis, peer review, etc. - and provide the country with a newly-discovered species.

This, in the most studied country in the world, Collins noted, is something quite special.

“In our profession, it is the pinnacle of what we do,” Collins, a renowned herpetologist based at the University of Kansas. “To find a new frog in the United States of America is very difficult and doesn’t happen very often.”

“It’s the greatest discovery a herpetologist can make. It’s the top of the heap.”

Collins is familiar to many along the Forgotten Coast. Winters for the past seven, eight years or more have been spent between Port St. Joe and St. George Island, surveying sites such as the St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge or the St. Joseph Bay Buffer Preserve for amphibians and snakes and other creepy things.

Traipsing through the woods, peeking in holes most would avoid to find animals most would just as soon avoid. It’s one way to enjoy retirement.

And in there might be a definition of a herpetologist - generally navigating ick to find icky things; when they see a rattlesnake, as Collins did last weekend on St. Vincent, they run toward the snake, not away as with most sane people.

Emily Lemmon, the once little girl who conducted DNA tests on frogs in high school, who latched onto Collins, teaching in her hometown of Lawrence, Kansas as a mentor, is also no stranger to these parts.

Nearly four years ago, Emily and Alan were conducting research into speciation - understanding diversity and how species are related would be a “Speciation for Dummies” definition - from the Buffer Preserve.

They were concentrating on frogs, chorus frogs.

I happened to be doing a story on the opening of the preserve education center and its value as a kind of hostel/Motel 6 for scientists and researchers working in the area. Emily and Alan were staying at the preserve center.

Both, by the way, are soon to become Florida State Seminoles as they have accepted tenure-track positions at Florida State University, Emily in molecular biology and Alan in a field of philosophy.

In any case, while at the education center I had a chance to speak to Emily and Alan. More to the truth, they spoke and I tried to keep up.

I’m sure they felt like they were explaining the nuances of wet and dry food to a cat.

At the time, they had recorded more than 60 different frog calls, downloaded them onto a computer and conduct what I could only describe as wave analysis - every one of those 60 calls, as Emily played them, had a different wave pattern on her laptop screen.

They had also rigged a box which on one side was placed a speaker. A female frog would be placed in the box, a hood over its heads and a male call would be played through the speaker.

The female responds, we have the same species. She ho-hums and two different species. Frogs are particular creatures, each species a distinct-genetic unit. They respond only to their own species.

And, as their name suggests, the call is everything for a chorus frog.

That call is from the male, typically when it is cold and rainy. The call signals “I am in the mood.”

Male chorus frogs are in the mood just once a year so that call, well, let’s just say sound quality and projection are fairly important. These are frogs that need to be able to sing “Figaro” and mean it.

“The call is incredibly important to their existence,” Collins said.

And each night, Emily and Alan would go out into the woods near dusk, spend hours listening and trapping. Each day they would go over the previous night’s sojourn and analyze what they had found.

“You have to be out and about at very strange times trying to find something that is small and easy to hide,” Collins said.

In any case, after Florida, Alan and Emily were headed north toward Virginia, if memory serves, and obviously, currently based out of the University of California at Davis, their travels included Louisiana, where they made their find.

“I’m like a father, I’m so ecstatic,” Collins said. “It is a great discovery, it really is.”

Best to bask in the Lemmons’ achievement, I would attest kind reader, than ever try to understand just how they did it.