Whooping Cranes Consume Plains Leopard Frogs at Migratory Stopover Sites in Nebraska

Whooping cranes (Grus americana) currently consist of a single, wild population that migrates annually from breeding grounds at Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada, to wintering grounds on and around the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge along the Texas coast, USA (NRC 2005). This population reached a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Geluso, Keith, Krohn, Brad T., Harner, Mary J., Assenmacher, Michael J.
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 2013
Subjects:
Whooping cranes
Plains leopard frogs
Biodiversity
Botany
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Environmental Sciences
Life Sciences
Natural Resources and Conservation
Systems Biology
Weed Science
Austin
Canada
Chavez
Ramirez
Weir
Wood Buffalo
Wood Buffalo National Park
Online Access:https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tpn/59
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/tpn/article/1050/viewcontent/pdf_geluso_45_2.pdf
Description
Summary:Whooping cranes (Grus americana) currently consist of a single, wild population that migrates annually from breeding grounds at Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada, to wintering grounds on and around the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge along the Texas coast, USA (NRC 2005). This population reached a low of less than 20 individuals in 1941 (Allen 1952) but has rebounded to over 250 individuals (Chavez-Ramirez and Wehtje 2012, Gil-Weir et al. 2012). Whooping cranes migrate approximately 4,000 km each spring and autumn, traversing much of the North American Great Plains (Lewis 1995) and periodically landing along rivers, wetlands, and other shallow bodies of water for short-duration stopovers (Austin and Richert 2001). Our observations represent some of the few published accounts of a frog species being consumed by whooping cranes along the Central Flyway.

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