I think there is likely a combination of things going on witht he auratus in the hobby but my opinion is that mixing is probably at the bottom of the list. D. auratus do show a lot of geographic variablity with populations and subpopulstions showing distinct morphological differences. And auratus have a very large range for a dart frog so there are a lot of wild populations (with their inherent morpholigical differences) out there. And finally auratus have been imported in greater numbers and from more locations than any other pdf. So my hunch is that the majority of the "morphs" in the hobby are either from legitimately distinct natural populations, or they have been artificially selected from naturally variable populations (what I call Invent-O-Morph). I would place crossing lines at the bottom of the list for reasons why we see so many morphs in the hobby though.
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Brent
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