Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

• Biogeographic Regions
• neotropical
  • native

Habi­tat

Oophaga pumilio typ­i­cally live in rain­for­est habi­tats and also live in cacao and ba­nana groves, but not ba­nana plan­ta­tions. Un­like some other Den­dro­bates, O. pumilio tend to live near the for­est floor in leaf lit­ter but they fre­quently climb trees and vines. Fe­males oviposit on land, but will trans­port each tad­pole to its own wa­ter-filled bromeliad to com­plete meta­mor­pho­sis. Thus, these frogs re­quire moist, ter­res­trial habi­tats with abun­dant wa­ter-filled plants for suc­cess­ful re­pro­duc­tion. ("Poi­son frogs", 2003; Sav­age, 2002)

In Nicaragua, Oophaga pumilio live be­tween 0 to 940 m above sea level and in Panama be­tween 0 to 495 m. Costa Rican pop­u­la­tions in­habit sim­i­lar el­e­va­tions. (Sav­age, 2002)

• Habitat Regions
• tropical
• terrestrial

• Terrestrial Biomes
• rainforest

• Range elevation

  0 to 940 m

  0.00 to 3083.99 ft

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Oophaga pumilio are slen­der frogs with bi­lat­eral sym­me­try. They are small frogs mea­sur­ing 17 to 24 mm in length at adult­hood. They fea­ture four, un-webbed dig­its on each hand and foot, and the body is over­all quite com­pact. These frogs have fairly large, dark eyes set on the sides of the head. The skin of a poi­son dart frog is very moist which gives them a some­what glossy ap­pear­ance in bright light. This species is sex­u­ally monomor­phic.

They are typ­i­cally bright red with blue legs al­though they vary greatly in col­oration, and are known as being one of the most poly­mor­phic, apose­matic species. How­ever, pop­u­la­tions of O. pumilio tend to be the same color. Though typ­i­cally straw­berry red, the dor­sal col­oration can vary in color from red to blue, yel­low, white, green, black or or­ange. The dor­sal sur­face may also fea­ture dark spots or mot­tling. Legs are typ­i­cally darker and have some de­gree of black­ish mot­tling. Their apose­matic col­oration has con­ver­gently evolved be­tween some sep­a­rate pop­u­la­tions.

Tad­poles are dark brown above with lighter brown un­der­sides and dark spots scat­tered through­out. They have small, ven­tral, oral discs with large, ser­rated beaks. They can reach 16 mm in length. ("Poi­son frogs", 2003; Sand­meier, 2001; Sav­age, 2002)

• Other Physical Features
• ectothermic
• heterothermic
• bilateral symmetry
• poisonous

• Sexual Dimorphism
• sexes alike

• Range length

  17 to 24 mm

  0.67 to 0.94 in

De­vel­op­ment

Straw­berry dart frog zy­gotes are formed when a male fer­til­izes eggs from a fe­male. The zy­gotes di­vide until they be­come tad­poles at which point they swim onto their mother’s back and are in­di­vid­u­ally taken to axils of bromeli­ads. These plants have small pools of water which the tad­poles com­plete meta­mor­pho­sis in. The tad­poles re­quire a food source within 3 days of being re-lo­cated or they will starve. Fe­males pro­vide un­fer­til­ized eggs for the young to con­sume. Tad­poles begin meta­mor­pho­sis after grow­ing to 11 mm in length, and the process takes 6 to 8 weeks to com­plete. (Du­ell­man and Trueb, 1986; Sav­age, 2002)

• Development - Life Cycle
• metamorphosis

Re­pro­duc­tion

There is a cer­tain amount of sex­ual se­lec­tion for Oophaga pumilio. Fe­males tend to choose males with sim­i­lar col­ored dor­sal sides which usu­ally means that they are from the same pop­u­la­tion. Males tend to have a bet­ter chance of mat­ing if their ter­ri­tory is larger, there­fore they will com­pete by wrestling for large ter­ri­to­ries. Perch height and call­ing fre­quency also in­flu­ence the like­li­hood of male mat­ing. This may not nec­es­sar­ily be a mat­ter of sex­ual se­lec­tion as much as it is good ad­ver­tis­ing.

In gen­eral, O. pumilio are polyg­y­nan­drous, with both males and fe­males mat­ing with dif­fer­ent part­ners mul­ti­ple times per breed­ing sea­son. The fe­male comes to the male by fol­low­ing his call and after a brief pe­riod of mu­tual tac­tile stim­u­la­tion the cou­ple breed by egg lay­ing and fer­til­iz­ing. They as­sume a vent to vent pos­ture fac­ing away from each other. The whole breed­ing process takes be­tween 10 and 180 min­utes.

There is ev­i­dence that these frogs may have some de­gree of color-vi­sion. Their eyes con­tain struc­tures re­quired to see dif­fer­ent wave­lengths, and thus may be able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween color morphs of their species. This may play a role in sex­ual se­lec­tion, but more re­search must be done. ("Poi­son frogs", 2003; Maan and Cum­mings, 2008; Proehl and Hoedl, 1999)

• Mating System
• polygynandrous (promiscuous)

Oophaga pumilio may breed through­out the year, but only under fa­vor­able, moist con­di­tions. Fe­males gen­er­ally do not ovu­late dur­ing drier pe­ri­ods and males are less likely to call at this time. After mat­ing, fe­males lay a clutch of 3 to 5 fer­til­ized eggs in moist leaf lit­ter. Under the male's care, the eggs de­velop into tad­poles after 10 to 14 days, at which time the fe­male take sole re­spon­si­bil­ity for the young. After being trans­ported to in­di­vid­ual, wa­ter-filled bromeli­ads, tad­poles metam­por­pho­size into adults after 43 to 52 days. Both male and fe­male Oophaga pumilio reach sex­ual ma­tu­rity at 10 months of age. (Du­ell­man and Trueb, 1986; Sand­meier, 2001; Sav­age, 2002)

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• year-round breeding
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• fertilization
  • external
• oviparous

• Breeding interval

  Under optimal, moist conditions, Oophaga pumilio may breed year round.

• Breeding season

  The breeding season for Oophaga pumilio may last 8 to 10 months.

• Range number of offspring

  3 to 5

• Average number of offspring

  4.6

• Range time to hatching

  10 to 14 days

• Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female)

  10 months

• Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male)

  10 months

Oophaga pumilio se­lect ter­res­trial lo­ca­tions to lay eggs, which then re­quire sig­nif­i­cant ad­di­tional mois­ture to avoid dessi­ca­tion. To en­sure the clutch is moist, a male will uri­nate on the eggs on a daily basis. The male also de­fends the egg clutch, re­moves fun­gus, and ro­tates the eggs be­fore they be­come tad­poles.

When the eggs hatch after 10 to 14 days, the fe­male trans­ports tad­poles from one to four at a time to a wa­tery hol­low in the veg­e­ta­tion (often a wa­ter-filled bromeliad). One tad­pole is de­posited in each lo­ca­tion, be­cause they will con­sume the smaller of their sib­lings if they are left to grow to­gether. The fe­male straw­berry poi­son frogs must pro­vide food for each tad­pole within 3 days of trans­port or they will starve. Af­ter­wards, she will make morn­ing, daily vis­its to feed each tad­pole 1 to 5 un­fer­til­ized eggs. A fe­male will back into the bromeliad and sub­merge her vent into the pool of water, where the tad­pole will stiffen its body and vi­brate to so­licit eggs. Fe­males will only feed their own tad­poles even if so­licited by oth­ers. ("Poi­son frogs", 2003; Cohen and Steb­bins, 1995; Du­ell­man and Trueb, 1986; Proehl and Hoedl, 1999; Sand­meier, 2001; Sav­age, 2002; Weiskit­tle, 2008)

• Parental Investment
• male parental care
• female parental care
• pre-fertilization
  • provisioning
  • protecting
    • female
• pre-hatching/birth
  • provisioning
    • male
  • protecting
    • male
• pre-weaning/fledging
  • provisioning
    • female
  • protecting
    • male
• pre-independence
  • provisioning
    • female
  • protecting
    • male

Lifes­pan/Longevity

In­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the life span of straw­berry poi­son frogs is rare, but closely re­lated Den­dro­bates au­ra­tus are known to live up to 17 years in cap­tiv­ity. ("Ar­row-poi­son Frogs", 1970)

• Typical lifespan
  Status: captivity

  17 (high) years

Be­hav­ior

Male Oophaga pumilio are known for their ag­gres­sive ter­ri­to­r­ial be­hav­ior. Males call to es­tab­lish ter­ri­to­ries and to de­ter­mine if there are in­trud­ers within these ter­ri­to­ries. If an in­truder re­sponds to the male's ter­ri­tory calls and ad­vances to­wards the ter­ri­tory holder, the res­i­dent male will ini­ti­ate a wrestling match. A wrestling match may last up to 20 min­utes and ends after one frog is pinned down, re­leased and va­cates the ter­ri­tory. This oc­curs more in the morn­ing than in the af­ter­noon. Straw­berry poi­son frogs put most of their en­ergy into feed­ing, mat­ing, tak­ing care of off­spring and de­fend­ing their ter­ri­tory.

In an­other in­ter­est­ing show of in­traspe­cific com­pe­ti­tion, if a male comes upon the clutch of eggs of an­other straw­berry dart frog, it will con­sume the eggs. If there are small tad­poles in an axil that a male finds, it will allow one to climb on its back and will trans­port it to a dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tion where it will starve since it is de­pen­dent on the food it re­ceives from its mother.

Straw­berry poi­son frogs are di­ur­nal and are often seen on or near the for­est floor. They are par­tic­u­larly ac­tive in the morn­ings. In­di­vid­u­als are mainly soli­tary but come to­gether to breed or com­pete for ter­ri­tory. This species gen­er­ally stays in the same area, and no mi­gra­tory move­ments have been ob­served. (Du­ell­man and Trueb, 1986; Gard­ner and Graves, 2005; Sav­age, 2002)

• Key Behaviors
• arboreal
• terricolous
• saltatorial
• diurnal
• motile
• sedentary
• solitary
• territorial

• Range territory size

  0.24 to 4.78 m^2

Home Range

At the Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Trop­i­cal Stud­ies at La Selva Bi­o­log­i­cal Sta­tion, stud­ies have shown that male O. pumilio de­fend a ter­ri­tory of 0.24 to 4.78 m squared which in­cludes call­ing perches, for­ag­ing sites, and tad­pole rear­ing sites. Males have been ob­served to have a home range of 6 to 16 m squared that varies in re­sponse to abun­dance of fe­males. Fe­males oc­cupy larger ter­ri­to­ries of un­doc­u­mented size within a home range of 6 to 16 m squared. Fe­males often have larger home ranges which vary in re­sponse to abun­dance of tad­pole rear­ing sites. Other stud­ies at Hi­toy-Cerre Na­tional Park have shown home ranges to reach 24.5 m squared, pos­si­bly re­flect­ing less re­source avail­abil­ity. (Gard­ner and Graves, 2005; Sav­age, 2002)

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

The calls of Oophaga pumilio con­sist of a se­ries of short chirps last­ing 5 to 32 sec­onds with 5 to 9 notes per sec­ond most often used for ter­ri­to­r­ial an­nounce­ment by males and for males and fe­males to an­nounce avail­abil­ity for mat­ing. Dur­ing mat­ing, males and fe­males will en­gage in mu­tual tac­tile stim­u­la­tion, but un­like many am­phib­ians they do not en­gage in am­plexus.

It has been re­cently dis­cov­ered that Oophaga pumilio fea­ture eyes with unique rods and cones that en­able them to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween the many con­spe­cific color morphs. Fe­males rely heav­ily on this abil­ity to se­lect mates of the same color morph. (Forester and Wis­nieski, 1991; Sav­age, 2002; Sid­diqi, et al., 2004)

• Communication Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic

Food Habits

Straw­berry poi­son frogs feed by "wide for­ag­ing" in which frogs use their tongues to catch large num­bers of small prey. All of their diet con­sists of small arthro­pods, some of which (par­tic­u­larly formicine ants) pro­vide tox­ins which the frogs can ex­crete through their skin. Oophaga pumilio con­sume mostly ants but mites also make up a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their diet. The tad­poles are oophages, so called be­cause they eat un­fer­til­ized eggs ei­ther by cut­ting a hole and suck­ing the con­tents out or in the case of larger tad­poles, con­sume the egg whole. Straw­berry poi­son frogs will typ­i­cally eat from 7 prey per hour (for ju­ve­niles) to 14 prey per hour (adults). (Cohen and Steb­bins, 1995; Don­nelly, 1991; Du­ell­man and Trueb, 1986; Grant, et al., 2006; Sav­age, 2002)

• Primary Diet
• carnivore
  • insectivore

• Animal Foods
• eggs
• insects
• terrestrial non-insect arthropods

Pre­da­tion

Straw­berry poi­son dart frogs have few major preda­tors be­cause their apose­matic col­oration warns preda­tors that it is very poi­so­nous. How­ever, night ground snakes are im­mune to the tox­ins of Oophaga pumilio. Tad­poles are often con­sumed be­cause their poi­son glands are un­der­de­vel­oped. (Du­ell­man and Trueb, 1986; Myers, et al., 1978; Wang and Shaf­fer, 2008)

• Anti-predator Adaptations
• aposematic

• Known Predators

  • Night ground snakes (Liophis epinephelus)

Ecosys­tem Roles

Den­dro­bates pumilo fills a niche of ant and mite pop­u­la­tion con­trol. They play a sig­nif­i­cant role in pest con­trol for local plant life. Though the poi­so­nous adults are rarely preyed upon, de­fense­less tad­poles are likely a food source for preda­tors. (Cohen and Steb­bins, 1995)

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Oophaga pumilio are some­times cap­tured (il­le­gally) and sold as pets. As with other species of the genus Den­dro­bates, O. pumilio se­crete a very pow­er­ful al­ka­loid poi­son which may offer sig­nif­i­cant med­ical prospects, but no major break­throughs have been made. Na­tive human pop­u­la­tions use the pow­er­ful skin tox­ins to lace arrow heads, which sig­nif­i­cantly aids in hunt­ing. The ex­ten­sive va­ri­ety of color morphs dis­played by Oophaga pumilio make them an ideal species for re­search to gain bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of apose­matic col­oration. (Sand­meier, 2001)

• Positive Impacts
• pet trade
• research and education

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

There is no neg­a­tive im­pact to hu­mans from Den­dr­bates pumilio.

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

Cli­mate change as well as de­for­esta­tion in the habi­tat of O. pumilio could have dras­tic af­fects as the tad­pole rear­ing process is ex­tremely habi­tat spe­cific. Straw­berry poi­son frogs are very pop­u­lar in the pet trade and pop­u­la­tions may be threat­ened by il­le­gal cap­ture. De­spite these po­ten­tial threats, pop­u­la­tion num­bers are cur­rently high and they are con­sid­ered least con­cern by the IUCN Red List. (Sav­age, 2002)

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• CITES

  No special status

Con­trib­u­tors

Austin Pen­ner (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Al­berta, Au­gus­tana Cam­pus, Doris Audet (ed­i­tor), Uni­ver­sity of Al­berta, Au­gus­tana Cam­pus, Rachelle Ster­ling (ed­i­tor), Spe­cial Pro­jects.

Ref­er­ences

1970. Ar­row-poi­son Frogs. Pp. 94 in M Bur­ton, R Bur­ton, eds. The in­ter­na­tional wildlife en­cy­clo­pe­dia, Vol. 1, Third Edi­tion. Tar­ry­town NY: Mar­shall Cavendish Cor­po­ra­tion.

A Bran­nan. 2009. "Poi­son Frogs" (On-line). An­i­mal cor­ner. Ac­cessed Oc­to­ber 10, 2009 at http://​www.​animalcorner.​co.​uk/​rainforests/​paf_​about.​html.

En­cy­clopædia Bri­tan­nica. 2011. "Poi­son frog" (On-line). En­cy­clopædia Bri­tan­nica On­line. Ac­cessed Oc­to­ber 09, 2009 at http://​www.​britannica.​com/​EBchecked/​topic/​157588/​poison-frog.

2003. Poi­son frogs. Pp. 197-200 in M Hutchins, W Du­ell­man, N Schlager, eds. Grz­imek's An­i­mal Life En­cy­clo­pe­dia, Vol. 6, 2nd Edi­tion. Farm­ing­ton Hills, MI: Gale Group.

Cohen, N., R. Steb­bins. 1995. A nat­ural His­tory of Am­phib­ians. Prince­ton, New Jer­sey: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press.

Don­nelly, M. 1991. Feed­ing Pat­terns of the Straw­berry Poi­son Frog, Den­dro­bates pumilio (Anura: Den­dro­bati­dae). Copeia, 3: 723-730.

Du­ell­man, W., L. Trueb. 1986. Bi­ol­ogy of Am­phib­ians. New York, NY, USA: Mc­Graw-Hill Book Com­pany.

Forester, D., A. Wis­nieski. 1991. The Sig­nif­i­cance of air­bone Ol­fac­tory Cues to the Recog­ni­tion of Home area by the Poi­son Dart Frog. Jour­nal fo Her­petol­ogy, 25/4: 502-504.

Gard­ner, E., B. Graves. 2005. Re­sponses of Res­i­dent Male Den­dro­bates Pumilio to Ter­ri­tory In­trud­ers. Jour­nal fo Her­petol­ogy, 39/2: 248-253.

Grant, T., D. Frost, J. Cald­well, R. Gagliardo, C. Had­dad, P. Kok, D. Means, B. Noo­nan, W. Schargel, W. Wheeler. 2006. Phy­lo­ge­netic sys­tem­at­ics of dart-poi­son frogs and their rel­a­tives (Am­phibia, Athes­phata­nura, Den­dro­bati­dae). Bul­letin of the Amer­i­can Mu­seum of Nat­ural His­tory, 299: 1-266. Ac­cessed No­vem­ber 18, 2009 at http://​hdl.​handle.​net.​login.​ezproxy.​library.​ualberta.​ca/​2246/​5803.

Graves, B. 1999. Diel Ac­tiv­ity Pat­terns of the Sym­patric Poi­son Dart Frogs Den­dro­bates au­ra­tus and D. pumilio, in Costa Rica. Jour­nal fo Her­petol­ogy, 33/3: 375-381.

Maan, M., M. Cum­mings. 2008. Fe­male Pref­er­ences for Apose­matic Sig­nal Com­po­nents in a Poly­mor­phic Poi­son Frog. Evo­lu­tion, 62/9: 2334/2345.

Myers, C., J. Daly, B. Malkin. 1978. A dan­ger­ously toxic new frog (Phyl­lo­bates) used by the Emberá In­di­ans of west­ern Colom­bia, with dis­cus­sion of blow­gun fab­ri­ca­tion and dart poi­son­ing.. Bul­letin of the Amer­i­can Mu­seum of nat­ural his­tory, 161 (2): 307–365.

Proehl, H. 2005. Ter­ri­to­r­ial Be­hav­iour in Den­dro­batid Frogs. Jour­nal of Her­petol­ogy, 39/3: 354-365.

Proehl, H., W. Hoedl. 1999. Parental In­vest­ment, Po­ten­tial re­pro­duc­tive rates, adn mat­ing sys­tem in the straw­berry dart-poi­son frog Den­dro­bates Pumilio. Behav Ecol So­cio­biol, 46: 215-220.

Sand­meier, F. 2001. "Oophaga Pumilio" (On-line). Am­phib­i­aweb. Ac­cessed Sep­tem­ber 11, 2009 at http://​amphibiaweb.​org/​.

Sav­age, J. 2002. The Am­phib­ians and Rep­tiles of Costa Rica. Chicago: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press.

Sid­diqi, A., T. Cronin, E. Loew, M. Vorobyev, K. Sum­mers. 2004. In­ter­spe­cific and in­traspe­cific views of color sig­nals in the straw­berry poi­son frog Den­dro­bates pumilio. The Jour­nal of Ex­per­i­men­tal Bi­ol­ogy, 207: 2471-2485.

Wang, I., H. Shaf­fer. 2008. Rapid Color Evo­lu­tion in an apose­matic Species: A phy­lo­gen­tic Analy­sis of Color Vari­a­tion in the Strik­ingly Poly­mor­phic Staw­berry Poi­son-dart Frog. Evo­lu­tion, 62/11: 2742-2759.

Weiskit­tle, J. 2008. "Den­dro­bates pumilio: straw­berry poi­son dart frog" (On-line). Ac­cessed Oc­to­ber 10, 2009 at http://​jrscience.​wcp.​muohio.​edu/​fieldcourses02/​PapersCostaRicaArticles/​Dendrobatespumilio.​strawb.​html.