Blue-jeans Poison Dart Frog

Description:

Oophaga is a genus of poison-dart frogs containing nine species. Many of these species were formerly in the Dendrobates genus. This frog is locally called Blue-jeans Frog or Strawberry Poison-dart Frog (Dendrobates pumilio) Spanish name: Ranita roja. The frogs are distributed in Central and South America, from Nicaragua through the Colombian El Choco to northern Ecuador (at elevations below 1,200 metres (3,900 ft)).

Habitat:

Found in lowland moist and wet forest, the Strawberry Poison-dart lives in undisturbed areas or abandoned clearings. It may also inhabit cacao plantations.

Notes:

When a territorial male meets a female, she takes him to a place to lay their eggs and the male lays his sperm on the eggs to fertilize them. The female lays 3-4 eggs and the male fertilizes the eggs. They do not mate, they perform amplexus. Ten days later the tadpoles hatch and they are loaded onto the back of the female frog where they stick to the sticky mucus on her back. She takes the little tadpoles up into the canopy and deposits them in bromeliads that are filled with water. Every 2 days the female deposits two infertile eggs in the water to feed the young tadpoles. They spend about one month as tadpoles and after that they metamorphosis into little blue jean frogs. Eventually they grow to between 17 mm to 24 mm. They are active when it is raining. The larvae feed exclusively on unfertilized eggs supplied as food by the mother.