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There's a new tree frog "from off" in the Lowcountry, and one of his favorite dishes is other tree frogs, ones that have called the Southeastern coastal plain home for centuries.
The Cuban tree frog is starting to hitch rides on plants coming from nurseries in southern Florida and, over the winter, the first two known ones to be found in South Carolina were collected from a Mount Pleasant palm tree nursery.
What's uncertain, at this point, is whether the Cuban tree frog will stay, start families and devour native tree frog populations.
The problem with the invader is this: Cuban tree frogs grow much bigger, up to 4 or 5 inches long, than native tree frogs in North America, and they have no qualms about eating other species of their kind. Wildlife biologists have blamed Cuban tree frogs for decimating native tree frog populations in South Florida.
Tree frogs that are native to the Lowcountry include the green tree frog, squirrel tree frog, gray tree frog and pine woods tree frog, and all are usually 2-1/2 inches long or smaller. Another native frog that could be threatened by the Cuban tree frog would be the spring peeper, which measures less than an inch and a half.
The discovery of the Cuban tree frogs in Mount Pleasant came on the heels of ones being found in Savannah last fall.
The news made national headlines, raised concerns of wildlife biologists in Georgia and alerted some folks here of the possible invasion.
Billy McCord, a fisheries biologist for S.C. Department of Natural Resources, got a call in December from the nursery in Mount Pleasant....