In the Pacific Northwest, it is not unusual to try to kill off invasive bullfrogs by drawing down managed wetlands in imitation of ephemeral wetlands, a paper in The Journal of Wildlife Management says. Because the bullfrogs over-winter as tadpoles, the idea is to remove that over-wintering habitat.

However, the paper notes, in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, bullfrogs were observed metamorphosing after just four months. Some frogs can speed up their metamorphosis in response to a wetland that is drying out, can bullfrogs do this as well? If they could, this would be bad news for the invasive species control technique.

The study took bullfrog tadpoles from both ephemeral and permanent wetlands and subjected them to various regimes of water and lack of water. The study found that the bullfrog tadpoles did not speed up their metamorphosis in response to drying wetlands, but they did show a lot of variety in how long they took to mature.

The paper concluded that drawing down managed wetlands won’t cause bullfrog tadpoles to metamorphose faster, but that some bullfrogs may survive the draw-down because of the natural variability in the amount of time it takes them to become frogs.

Find the Journal of Wildlife Management article here. Reading it requires a fee or a subscription.