Sensory neurons in dorsal root ganglia of frogs project to areas of the spinal cord they do not normally innervate following removal of adjacent ganglia at tadpole stages (Frank and Westerfield, J. Physiol. (Lond.) 324:495-505, '82b). A possible explanation of this phenomenon is that sensory neurons project to wider areas of the spinal cord in tadpoles than in adult frogs and that partial deafferentation causes the retention of these widespread projections. Therefore, the specificity of sensory projections to the spinal cord in tadpoles was assessed by staining individual dorsal roots with horseradish peroxidase. Thoracic sensory neurons project to thoracic segments of the spinal cord and to the brainstem in tadpoles, like thoracic sensory neurons in adult frogs. They rarely arborize in the brachial region even at stages when no other sensory fibers arborize at this level. Furthermore, their projections are restricted to the dorsal horn at all stages. Conversely, hypoglossal sensory neurons, which project into the intermediate gray matter in the adult, also project to this area in tadpoles. The finding that sensory neurons in tadpoles only project to areas of the spinal cord that they innervate in the adult suggests that the novel projections observed following partial deafferentation of the spinal cord are actually induced by the operation. An additional finding was that forelimb afferents, which project to an area extending from the obex to midthoracic levels in adult frogs, arborize at rostral spinal levels and at thoracic levels several stages before they form projections to the region around their own dorsal root. These differences in the stages at which projections to different levels of the spinal cord develop suggest that local properties of the spinal cord may control the timing of sensory fiber arborization.