Share
Digg
StumbleUpon
RedditA grimacing Helen Geiger stands amid bikes and beach chairs in the garage of her Hawaiian home watching two men tramp through dense foliage in her backyard. Dragging a hose from a 100-gallon tank, they are seeking a tiny prey, invisible in the misty night but unmistakably present, its shrill, two-note ko-KEE mating call filling the air with earsplitting dissonance.
Unable to see the tiny frogs, no bigger than a quarter, the men follow their ears, spraying a mixture of citric acid and water over the ferns, Ohia trees and strawberry guava, killing many of the frogs on contact. "I'm so appreciative," she tells the men.
"In the daytime," she goes on, "it's beautiful and peaceful here in the rain forest." But nights are a different story. By the thousands, screeching coqui frogs have infested the trees all around her property, including those outside her upstairs bedroom window. Their nightly serenade has become so irritating that she now sleeps on the first floor with her windows shut—no way to live, she says, "if you like fresh air."
Geiger's wooded neighborhood, like scores of communities across Hawaii's Big Island, has been hit by rampaging Eleutherodactylus coqui. Biologists theorize that these tiny natives of Puerto Rico stowed away a dozen or so years ago on nursery plants en route to Hawaii. The Pacific island chain's moist, verdant environment offered the invaders an ideal habitat. With few natural predators, such as snakes and tarantulas, to keep their populations in check, the mottled yellow to grayish brown critters—almost impossible to spot on most vegetation—spread from the Big Island and Maui to Kauai and Oahu.
During the day, the coqui makes its nest in moist areas covered by leaves and leaf litter. Unlike the offspring of many other frog species, coqui froglets—about the size of a grain of rice when they hatch—emerge fully formed from eggs, skipping the tadpole stage entirely. (It's a tadpole's need for a pool of water that limits the spread of most frog species.) "We're dealing with a highly successful generalist that's capable of doing well in a variety of habitats and circumstances," says Lawrence Woolbright, a coqui researcher at New York's Siena College. "This frog is right up there with rats, cockroaches, pigeons and humans in terms of its adaptability."
With females producing an average of 28 eggs four times a year, densities of adult frogs in some Hawaiian locations have jumped to more than 6,000 an acre, some five times what they are back home in Puerto Rico, where they are eaten by spiders and snakes. The frogs begin making their fearsome racket when they are about 8 months old.
The screeching call is made by males, which contract their bodies, squeezing air out of their lungs and into their vocal sacs. Females seem to respond to both the frequency and volume of the call, which can reach from 70 to 90 decibels, comparable to a vacuum cleaner or a garbage disposal. (The federal government calls for workplace ear protection when noise reaches 85 decibels.)
"It is mind boggling if you go to an area that is infested. The noise factor is unbelievable," says Harry Kim, mayor of the Big Island. "And just imagine what the frogs are doing to the entire ecosystem." Researchers fear the coqui might severely reduce, or even wipe out, certain insects on which some rare birds rely. A thriving frog population could also mean a free lunch for other invasive species, such as rats and snakes.
Comments