The Korean brown frog is the smallest brown frog on the Korean Peninsula, only about 1.4–1.8 in (3.5–4.5 cm) long, with a thin white line running along its upper lip. It isn't found in the United States; it lives only in Korea and in Shandong Province, China.
Appearance
- Appearance
- A slender, pointy-snouted frog with a yellowish-brown back scattered with darker brown spots and a whitish belly. A dark mask runs from the snout through the eye, with a thin white or yellow line along the upper lip.
- Seasonal forms
- In breeding season males get bright white bellies, and females turn orange to reddish underneath.
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- Rice paddies
- Ponds and pools
- Lowland marshes
- Wet meadows
- Range
- The Korean Peninsula and Shandong Province, China. It does not occur in North America.
- Preferred conditions
- It favors open, wet, low-lying places such as rice paddies, ditches, marshes, and floodplains, and moves into nearby woods and valleys after breeding.
Behavior
- Diet
- Spiders, grasshoppers, crickets, flies, other small insects, and earthworms.
- Activity
- Many frogs spend the winter together in the mud at the bottom of ponds and pools.
Life cycle
- Breeding season
- Late winter to spring (February–May in South Korea)
- Nest
- Frogs gather to lay eggs in flooded rice paddies and still pools, so dozens of egg masses can appear in one spot.
- Clutch size
- About 400–500 eggs per mass
Name and classification
- About the name
- It was long treated as a subspecies of the Amur brown frog (Rana amurensis) and was recognized as its own species in 2006. A frog described from Shandong, China, as Rana kunyuensis later turned out to be the same species.
Conservation
- IUCN Red List
- LCLeast ConcernLow risk of extinction
- Status
- It is common overall, but habitat loss may threaten it in some places.
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