I'm not sure it's a gray area as much as most keepers don't know enough to answer this. D. truncatus are my favorite Dendrobates species so I looked into it nearly 10 years ago now and the info hasn't changed much.
The yellow animals may be from blood from different areas of Colombia, but over the years there have been so few animals that it hasn't likely mattered where the original populations came from (if they were known). They are well within the variation seen in populations in the wild, and actually show less variation that at least one "yellow" population I've seen recently!
Of the yellow there may be "two" lines, but at least in a few cases they have already been crossed. Animals imported by Bill Samples were known to be a nice strong yellow with a little gold dusting on their leg markings (most of the time by not always). If you look on the truncatus caresheet, the top and the bottom photos are of a pair I had that was likely pure "Samples" line. I believe these are the "early 90s" animals talked about earlier.
A second "line" was imported from Europe by Black Jungle, and I know they imported at least two animals that were male as they had a European male with a Samples line female (at least at one point I think this was the case and that may be the pair that is still producing for them. I got the other male, but he did poorly for me and died shortly after giving me my first fertile clutch. I consider it a nice injection of genes either way. The original male and the animals resulting from black jungle often had leg markings that often didn't have the gold brushed look to them, and typically showed up as more of a white color (photos 2, 3, and 4 from the top on the caresheet). I don't remember the exact date, but this would have been around late 2001 and early 2002 that I got the male from BJ.
They aren't distinct lines anymore, and I'm not sure if any other have been brought in from Europe. If they they have, I'd love to hear about it because getting fresh blood would be great!
The "blue" animals are more of a pale sky blue/green, and have thinner stripes than the yellow populations. As far as I know they all trace back to Todd Kelley's group. I'm happy to see that there has been more recent success with them and there are a few pairs breeding so they may become a little more available. These are probably another early 90s and I'd have to pester Todd to get better information.
There may be some more recent stuff that I've not kept up with that I'd love to hear about, I think these guys are fun frogs that deserve just as much attention as Auratus
I know there was that one guy (Coloran) that supposedly (going by his website) was legally working with a nice broad striped chrome green trunc (as well as auroteania, auratus and bicolor) that he could export, but as far as I know he has not responded to attempts to get in contact with him to see if/when he'd actually be allowed to do this. It would be nice to get legal Colombian frogs with locality data for once
