Frog Blog: Pug-nosed Treefrog Smilisca sila

Although I got a number of new frog species for my recording list while in Panama last summer, there were a couple of species I saw but didn't get to record. Fortunately, I spent December-January there again and although it was the beginning of the dry season, we had enough rain to get a total of 9 species recorded including one new one.

The Pug-nosed Treefrog (Smilisca sila) is a drab, somewhat smaller species of Smilisca found from the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica down through the central parts of Panama and into the lowlands of Colombia. This is a species found along rocky streams within its range.

These frogs are generally tan with varying amounts of green flecking or spotting on the dorsum. Their skin under their hindlimbs and on their toe webbing is suffused with blue. This species gets its common name for its relatively shorter face compared to the other Smilisca species. These frogs were recorded calling from rocks alongside a stream in a premontane forest.

The call of this species is a coarse quacking sound. It is somewhat remniscent of the larger Smilisca species, although not quite as loud nor complex as their calls.

Pug-nosed Treefrog from Anton Valley, Panama

The calls seem to change as they are repeated. When you look at the spectrogram from the last part (last four calls) of that recording, you can see how the call seems to get more "complicated" as it progresses. The first calls are very short compressed "quacks" but later calls are slowed down into longer rattling sounds.