TGIFF – Thank Goodness Its Frog Friday! – Water Lily Frog 

TGIFF!!! Thank Goodness it is FROG FRIDAY!! Today we are looking at the Water Lily Frog Hyperolius pusillus. The Water Lily Frog is a small, flat, green frog (males 16–20 mm in length) from the eastern lowlands of Africa. Its dorsum is translucent green and sometimes has dark dots. A fine dark canthal and dorsolateral line is often present. Males have white throats and females have green throats. Water Lily Frogs have golden eyes with horizontal pupils. Populations of Water Lily Frogs vary somewhat, for example, the specimens found in the dry savanna in Kenya are larger and have a conspicuous hour-glass pattern. Similar specimens are found in drier parts of eastern Zimbabwe. Water Lily Frogs can closely resemble Argus Reed Frog males Hyperolius argus.

Water Lily Frogs call from floating vegetation. The voice is a fast series of high-pitched screams with an indistinct frequency-intensity. A strange feature that has been noted from Kenya and South Africa is that when expanded the gular sac produces two supplementary expansions. Their eggs are light green in colour, and are placed in batches of 20–120 in a single layer between leaves of floating vegetation.

Water Lily Frogs are found in open swamp vegetation in the eastern lowlands from southernmost coastal Somalia southwards through Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Mozambique, Swaziland and the eastern provinces of in South Africa, where the distribution is shown on the map, from FrogMAP. The photo shown above was taken by Tony Archer and is FrogMAP record 315. In the distribution map, only the torquoise circles represent distribution records based on 21st century photographs; the orange squares represent museum specimens, some of which date back more than a century. Please help us to map this beautiful frog's 21st century distribution by submitting your photos to FrogMAP at vmus.adu.org.za.

Megan Loftie-Eaton
2012-10-26

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