So I was going to wait to post the Uyama pumilio pictures for another one of my updates, but given that I have so many, I figured that I would make a thread just for this morph to show the variety found within the morph and explain a little bit more about this rather odd morph.
This population seems very strange for a number of reasons. The variability of the color and pattern is huge. The belly pattern actually has pattern, which is the only morph I know of that does (it's reticulated like the dorsum). There are a number of them that, upon quick glance, could easily be confused for a
Colostethus talamancae, which makes me very curious as to the toxicity of this morph. The frogs are a little larger than other morphs (around 18-19mm SVL), which is closer to the size of Colostethus. I've still got to do a bit more on my measurements, but preliminarily, they seem to be shaped differently than other morphs.
This morph also is strange in that the frogs seem invisible. In walking into the location, you hear tons of them. Everywhere. When we did our surveys, we counted 5-10 males calling at a time (which is medium to high in density), but when you look for them, they are not there. For our 100 meter transects, we maybe found an average of 3 frogs. When we collected frogs for measurements, it took us about 2-3 hours to get 30 frogs, which is ridiculous. It was the strangest thing that I've ever seen. Or didn't see.
The strangest thing though, is that this location seems to be a mere 3km away from locations where Almirante frogs occur. I haven't verified this, but in talking to people around the area, it seems as though only 3km away, they've got solid red frogs, which is very intriguing since if there is a transitional form, it occurs in an incredibly small area. And if there isn't a transitional form, it would appear as though they're segregating themselves very well. All sorts of questions arise.
Anyway, here are some pictures to show the immense variety in this morph (all of these frogs were caught in an area about the size of a hectare or 2.5 acres for those not up on metric). Colors are all natural. I'm very glad that I managed to get to this population and well document it because the few pictures I have seen of these frogs are the most flattering for the morph. This should be a more accurate portrayal. I hope you enjoy it
And a "representative" belly shot:
I hope that helps a bit for this morph!
Uyama Pumilio In Detail. Pic Heavy!
Linear Mode
