''Andinobates dorisswansonae'', the dotted poison frog, is a species of

amphibian Amphibians are tetrapod, four-limbed and ectothermic vertebrates of the Class (biology), class Amphibia. All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terres ...

in the family

Dendrobatidae Poison dart frog (also known as dart-poison frog, poison frog or formerly known as poison arrow frog) is the common name of a group of frogs in the Family (biology), family Dendrobatidae which are native to tropical Central and South America. T ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

in the outskirts of

Falan Falan is a town and municipality in the Tolima department of Colombia. Falan was founded before 1539, by the Guandecas and Pomponáes tribes. It was discovered by Spanish Baltazar Maldonado in 1539. The population of the municipality was 17,25 ...

and north of the department of Tolima.Gallego Carvajal, Oscar; A. Quevedo Gil; V.F. Luna M. & W.E. Figueroa, 2008
''Falan Cuna de la Vida''
49. Municipio de Falan. It is toxic to humans.

Description

Its skin is bright black or dark brown with red, orange or yellow spots. It is distinguished in addition to other similar dendrobathids because it has the first and second toes fused, a characteristic that it shares only with a nearby species, ''

Andinobates daleswansoni ''Andinobates'' is a genus of poison dart frogs from Ecuador, Colombia and Panama. It contains species formerly classified in the genus ''Dendrobates'' and in 2006 transferred to the genus ''Ranitomeya''. In 2011 Twomey, Brown, and their colleag ...

''. Males measure between 16.2 and 17.1 mm in length and females between 17.5 and 19.4 mm.

Behavior

It lives among the leaf litter, in

secondary forests A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...

with good canopy and presence of bromeliads, where it deposits its tadpoles, which it cares for and carries on the back to a water source. It feeds on insects, especially ants.

Taxonomy

It was discovered by Oscar Javier Gallego Carvajal of the

University of Tolima The Universidad del Tolima-UT is a faculty of higher education located in the Colombian city of Ibague, capital of the department of Tolima. It is a public autonomous institution departmental order created by Ordinance No. 005 of 1945, with ...

in a fragment of secondary forest of the village of El Llano, in Falan. The description of the species was made together with José Vicente Rueda Almonacid, Marco Rada, Santiago J. Sánchez Pacheco and Alvaro Andrés Velásquez Alvarez, of Conservación Internacional Colombia and was published in ''Zootaxa'' in 2006.

Threats

It is threatened by habitat loss (

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. Logging is the beginning of a supply chain ...

farming Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

), hunting, and as a pet/display animal.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q28016772 dorisswansonae Amphibians described in 2006