M. baroni, madagascarensis, nigrans: the difference?

Re: ?

OK - you just proved yourself mortal. There are Gold/Orange/Red morphs of Amazonicus, not just red. And supposedly I've got Red Vents (not Red Amazonicus for those of you scoring at home!). It's truly kind of a mess. And no one, and I mean no one, seems to have a true clue on what's it all about.

Take it a step further and you'll only find one person who has ever espoused Amazonicus being split off from Ventrimaculatas (he being Rainier Schulte).

So - no better than you're original query in regards to the mantellas.

Sorry to interrupt - thought you might have had info that could have cleared things up for me.

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Rain_Frog said:

oh yeah, amazonicus is said to be a color morph of vents? Red vent? intermedius is a red form of imitator?

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differences

john gibeau has recorded and tested the calls of both vents and amazonicus. I forgot what he used, but he concluded that they have an almost identical call. You can read about it at tincs.com. About red/ orange/ gold amazonicus, could they just be a continuation on the morphs of vents? Or, ok, do you guys think then that amazonicus should be reclassified as a subspecies of vent? Or just amazonicus period?
I really wonder why only intermedius, according to what I have read, seems to be the only subspecies of any dart frog. I could be wrong, but thats what I have read. Do you folks know if any dart frog morph is actually a sub like intermedius? Whats up with salvias E. tricolor being separated to Phyllobates anthonyi anyway?

When I first saw azureus, I really did think it was just a different kind of tinctorius. The siplawini forms close by look very similar. Personally, as far as terribilis and bicolor, sometimes I wonder if they should be reclassifed as subspecies. Then again, I'm no expert on Dendrobatids, I don't have access to gene sequencing. Thats really my opinion. I was informed by my old biology professor (who has a major in zoology and is a herpetologist) that the reason why they separated the leopard frog complex (Rana pipiens, blairi, sphenocephla, etc) is because the northern forms will not breed with the southern forms in an experiment. However, some animals and plants can cross breed and still produce fertile offspring, so that complicates things further.

And back to my original question, I think maybe baroni is more of a grayish on its back than the more black sided madagscarensis. That was only one photo though, I could be wrong.

The differences in physical appearance between madagascariensis and baroni:

1) Madagascariensis has a yellow or gold streak in the upper eye, baroni will have solid black eyes.

2) Madagascariensis will have bright red ventral femurs and baroni won't (although some people disagree)

3) The legs of baroni are usually "messier" than madagascariensis although baroni can have crisp black and orange/yellow/red back legs too, just not as common.

4) Baroni grows larger than madagascariensis and usually has a more streamlined shape although obviously small, fat baroni can look like madagasceriensis and vice versa.

The first two I pulled out of Marc Staniszewski's book Mantellas, the other two are just general observations that seem to flow around the mantella hobby. Nigricans looks drastically different than the other two but is easy to confuse with pulchra and pulchra is easy to confuse with madagascariensis/baroni so you could say they are somewhat similar in appearance.

mantellassssss.........

Just for fun,,,,

some big brains are telling that we have 12 species of mantella other 17 and other don't give a f%?&.....

So when you want to know what exacly the species you have or the pet shop have.... you will have a chance to do a mistake....

I have three mantella viridis and I am not sure at 100%... I am at 99.9%..

So good luck to know the real species of the mantella and if you have a real illumination give me a mail....

Because I will be bowl...someday