Re: Site-specific frogs: is it possible?
I think that the easiest way to get that to change is to get someone with the mind to do it to actually do it. Right now, importers are happy just grabbing frogs and not bringing them in with any data, and hobbyists will buy them without any qualms, especially if they're something new and rare (e.g. "El Dorados").
I think that if a person actually brought in frogs in enough numbers with site data like what Understory is doing, and started saturating the market with those frogs, the change in hobbyist mentality would slowly come. I mean, take, for example, the imitators. Many/most of them morphs in the hobby can be traced back to a particular site, and because of that, you see a lot of people advertising lines and actually know where their frogs came from. I would guess that if imitators were brought in like pumilio were brought in, people wouldn't be as willing to buy them because there's no data associated with them.
I think that that is really what needs to happen in Panama. Right now, in regars to pumilio, the only frogs with true site data are those that Rich Frye has, and that is such a small population that you're lucky to get pumilio with true site data. As is evident from the constant "what morph is this" threads, I'm fairly convinced that the frogs that are coming in are simply IDed when imported and don't actually have data associated with them. It might be as simple as "Bastimentos, Chiriqui Grande, and Cayo de Agua" in this shipment, and then guessing what is what.
And even if there are data actually associated with individual frogs, it's incredibly generalized, especially in areas where it is critical to make distinctions. I mean, I know of 5 or so phenotypically distinct populations occurring on Bastimentos island, so having frogs coming in simply labeled as "Bastimentos" is not sufficient.
Personally, I'd love to do an import to start the process, but I don't know that it would be financially possible for me nor do I think I could bring enough in to make a huge difference. And ideally, I'd like to do what Mark is doing and actually distribute captive bred animals from wild caught ones rather than pass out wild frogs.
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