I finally caught a froglet emerging from a brom axil on my pum RFB viv! Everyone else seems to be able to do this consistently, but I guess I just don't watch my frogs enough, or something. I try to enjoy the vivs as whole entities so I don't end up "eyeballing" them all the time, for fear of stressing them out.
Anyhow, here is the little one:
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Now, the more observant among you may have been asking yourselves "wait, that doesn't look like an RFB". And you'd be right. Indeed, it looks almost like a pum "blue jeans", which is a much more widespread morph of this species (unless you split O. typographica, which is still a bit suspect in my mind). So, what gives? I do not know if most or all recently emerged pums have this color pattern. But if they do, it would be similar to the case from the Phyllobates genus, where all species emerge looking like P. vittatus and the like, despite two notable species later becoming primarily, bright yellow.
This got me thinking. When an organism retains juvenile coloring, or attributes more generally, it is often called neoteny. For a dramatic example, think axolotols. In mammals, fallow deer have neotenous coloration in that they retain the spots into adulthood, common to many deer when young. But what about when the consistent attribute, like coloring, from youth through adulthood changes in only some lineages? Is this simply a case of derived coloration? Though it would be accurate, it also feel as though it misses some of the developmental attrbutes of the case. Try as I might, I couldn't find a single term that described this condition! Notabally, my wife is a professor of animal behavior and has colleagues who study coloration and development, and dart frogs specifically. This sort of surprised me! I suppose there is the open oportunity for someone to name this situation.
Sorry for going so far down the rabbit hole of nerd stuff. But apparently this is what I think about when I find my first newly emerged frog.
Anyhow, here is the little one:
Now, the more observant among you may have been asking yourselves "wait, that doesn't look like an RFB". And you'd be right. Indeed, it looks almost like a pum "blue jeans", which is a much more widespread morph of this species (unless you split O. typographica, which is still a bit suspect in my mind). So, what gives? I do not know if most or all recently emerged pums have this color pattern. But if they do, it would be similar to the case from the Phyllobates genus, where all species emerge looking like P. vittatus and the like, despite two notable species later becoming primarily, bright yellow.
This got me thinking. When an organism retains juvenile coloring, or attributes more generally, it is often called neoteny. For a dramatic example, think axolotols. In mammals, fallow deer have neotenous coloration in that they retain the spots into adulthood, common to many deer when young. But what about when the consistent attribute, like coloring, from youth through adulthood changes in only some lineages? Is this simply a case of derived coloration? Though it would be accurate, it also feel as though it misses some of the developmental attrbutes of the case. Try as I might, I couldn't find a single term that described this condition! Notabally, my wife is a professor of animal behavior and has colleagues who study coloration and development, and dart frogs specifically. This sort of surprised me! I suppose there is the open oportunity for someone to name this situation.
Sorry for going so far down the rabbit hole of nerd stuff. But apparently this is what I think about when I find my first newly emerged frog.
