Ariel Kahrl
Assistant Professor of Biology
Faculty Profile
This project aimed to test two competing hypotheses about how sexually-selected traits are expressed in male green frogs. For this study Girard and Clark collected frogs from Hamilton's golf course pond and collected measurements of several important reproductive traits for male frogs: forearm size (used to fight and hold on to females), yellow belly coloration (used to potentially attract mates), and sperm traits (sperm size, sperm count, and sperm velocity). They then compared these traits to one another and found primarily negative correlations between color and sperm traits suggesting that males have to “choose” to invest their energetic resources into either their color or their sperm quality. To read more, see the published article here.
Posted December 9, 2025
