Painted Reed Frog

• Its colour variability is so extreme that the different forms were described for decades as separate species: striped, spotted, green and whitish frogs can be siblings from the same clutch.
• The females acquire their final pattern after metamorphosis and it does not change again, while the males stay more uniform: it is one of the few cases of colour dimorphism of this kind among frogs.
• It reflects ultraviolet light with its skin, which has been linked to protection from radiation in an animal that spends the day exposed on vegetation.
• Its colour variation is extraordinary: stripes, spots and different background colours coexist in the same population, to the point that for decades they were described as different species.
• Part of that variation is not genetic but developmental: on reaching maturity, sex hormones trigger a colour change in the females, while the males usually keep the juvenile colouring. Sexual dichromatism is rare among frogs, yet in this genus it is the norm.
• Protogynous sex change has been documented in the genus: females that switch to functioning as males.
• It survives the direct sun of the savanna, something exceptional in a frog. It reduces water loss with a highly impermeable skin and iridophores that reflect the radiation, and so it can spend the dry day exposed on a reed.
• Its chorus is deafening: hundreds of males gather at the ponds of the wet season, and females have been shown to exercise genuine choice only when the chorus is small.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (amphibian)

Habitat & environment

Marsh vegetation of pools, marshes and wetlands of eastern and southern Africa

Sexual maturity

12 months

Gestation / incubation

Larval development in pools and wetlands

Litter / clutch size

400 eggs

Sources consulted: https://www.iucnredlist.org/ | https://animaldiversity.org/ | https://es.wikipedia.org/