# Dry season tinctorius behavior



## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

I thought some of the people may be interested in this as it shows how tincts act in the wild as compared to how we keep them... 

Dry-season retreat and dietary shift of the dart-poison frog Dendrobates tinctorius (Anura: Dendrobatidae) 

http://www.phyllomedusa.esalq.usp.br/articles/volume9/number1/913752.pdf


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## zBrinks (Jul 16, 2006)

Nice find Ed!


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## HunterB (Apr 28, 2009)

Great info Ed, I've often wondered if were keeping em to wet and what would happen if we changed it


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## zBrinks (Jul 16, 2006)

I keep my frogs in a basement in Michigan, so it's easy to keep them a bit more 'seasonally' - I typically reduce misting by half for short periods (3-4 weeks) a few times a year - the frogs really maintain larger clutch sizes when given breaks like this.


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## Logqan (Sep 24, 2008)

wonderful info, I was going to do a seasonal change this year with my darts and not just my mantellas and this makes me feel like its the right idea.


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

Pretty sweet, thank you Ed!!


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## frogface (Feb 20, 2010)

I bookmarked this to go back and read later, and then, forgot all about it until cleaning out my bookmark folder today. Bringing it back up so others can read it too.


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## skylsdale (Sep 16, 2007)

One way to translate this into practical husbandry may be:

Keep males and females separate for a good portion of the year, at which point you simulate a dry season in their tanks, simplify their diets (primarily fruit flies). Then start spraying more, simulating a wet season...vary and increase their diet with other prey items. 

Then combine males/females into one large breeding tank with plenty of foliage and cover, continue the misting and varied diet for a few months during breeding. 

Then remove males/females into their separate tanks again...ramp down the misting and slowly reduce diets.


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## Rain_Frog (Apr 27, 2004)

that basically sounds like how you breed mantellas.


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## Rusty_Shackleford (Sep 2, 2010)

This maybe easier to accomplish in areas with more distinct seasons but I've been keeping my frogs in 4 seperate seasons. Warm/dry, warm/moist, cool/dry, cool/moist.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

skylsdale said:


> Then remove males/females into their separate tanks again...ramp down the misting and slowly reduce diets.


Or rotate the female into and out of the cage on a 2-3 week basis. The males should be left in until at least the tadpoles hatch which would simulate the length of time a male may stay in control of a territory. 

As a slight tangent to this topic, another one of the "status" points in this hobby is how often and how many frogs you can produce from your frogs in a given period of time. One of the things that this mentality can contribute to is the idea that captive bred frogs are inferior to wild caught frogs since captive bred frogs are often smaller and are less intensely colored... but we if we look at how the frogs we have data on, remain in a reproductive mode we can see that we are in effect forcing the frogs to reallocate nutritional reserves that would go towards growth and coloration to non-stop production of eggs.... (and in the case of obligates, froglets). We can even see this in the comments made by froggers of how thier pumilio are producing fertile clutches when in the wild, females don't produce clutches for fertilization when they are egg feeding..... 

Some comments

Ed


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## goof901 (Jan 9, 2012)

Ed said:


> Or rotate the female into and out of the cage on a 2-3 week basis. The males should be left in until at least the tadpoles hatch which would simulate the length of time a male may stay in control of a territory.
> 
> As a slight tangent to this topic, another one of the "status" points in this hobby is how often and how many frogs you can produce from your frogs in a given period of time. One of the things that this mentality can contribute to is the idea that captive bred frogs are inferior to wild caught frogs since captive bred frogs are often smaller and are less intensely colored... but we if we look at how the frogs we have data on, remain in a reproductive mode we can see that we are in effect forcing the frogs to reallocate nutritional reserves that would go towards growth and coloration to non-stop production of eggs.... (and in the case of obligates, froglets). We can even see this in the comments made by froggers of how thier pumilio are producing fertile clutches when in the wild, females don't produce clutches for fertilization when they are egg feeding.....
> 
> ...


so a sort of moral to the story is to let the frogs have a break and not breed by decreasing the misting and food?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

That is certainly a good start. 

Ed


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