# Uyama Pumilio In Detail. Pic Heavy!



## MonarchzMan (Oct 23, 2006)

So I was going to wait to post the Uyama pumilio pictures for another one of my updates, but given that I have so many, I figured that I would make a thread just for this morph to show the variety found within the morph and explain a little bit more about this rather odd morph.

This population seems very strange for a number of reasons. The variability of the color and pattern is huge. The belly pattern actually has pattern, which is the only morph I know of that does (it's reticulated like the dorsum). There are a number of them that, upon quick glance, could easily be confused for a _Colostethus talamancae_, which makes me very curious as to the toxicity of this morph. The frogs are a little larger than other morphs (around 18-19mm SVL), which is closer to the size of Colostethus. I've still got to do a bit more on my measurements, but preliminarily, they seem to be shaped differently than other morphs.

This morph also is strange in that the frogs seem invisible. In walking into the location, you hear tons of them. Everywhere. When we did our surveys, we counted 5-10 males calling at a time (which is medium to high in density), but when you look for them, they are not there. For our 100 meter transects, we maybe found an average of 3 frogs. When we collected frogs for measurements, it took us about 2-3 hours to get 30 frogs, which is ridiculous. It was the strangest thing that I've ever seen. Or didn't see.

The strangest thing though, is that this location seems to be a mere 3km away from locations where Almirante frogs occur. I haven't verified this, but in talking to people around the area, it seems as though only 3km away, they've got solid red frogs, which is very intriguing since if there is a transitional form, it occurs in an incredibly small area. And if there isn't a transitional form, it would appear as though they're segregating themselves very well. All sorts of questions arise.

Anyway, here are some pictures to show the immense variety in this morph (all of these frogs were caught in an area about the size of a hectare or 2.5 acres for those not up on metric). Colors are all natural. I'm very glad that I managed to get to this population and well document it because the few pictures I have seen of these frogs are the most flattering for the morph. This should be a more accurate portrayal. I hope you enjoy it 


























































































































































































And a "representative" belly shot:









I hope that helps a bit for this morph!


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## stemcellular (Jun 26, 2008)

Awesome, thanks for posting JP.


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## ChrisK (Oct 28, 2008)

Awesome, at least some are there that look like mine.


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## UmbraSprite (Mar 2, 2007)

Great to see some work being done on the less seen morphs!

Many questions indeed. 

Keep em coming JP!


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## james67 (Jun 28, 2008)

awesome. Its great to see some of the variation that we don't normally experience for lack of individuals in the hobby. (and is that the sound of speculation that this is a different species of Oophaga that Im hearing ???)

also, on a similar note I'd love to see some pics of the variation in the bruno population as there are very limited widely available pictures and of those that i have seen there seems to be quite a lot of variability (I've seen less than 10 pictures ever and the US and European populations seem very different)

james


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

Greta detailed work, love that blue one!!


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## MonarchzMan (Oct 23, 2006)

ChrisK said:


> Awesome, did you measure them?


Yep, in the process of doing so. I've only got the few Solarte frogs to compare to at the moment, but these Uyama frogs are shaped differently based on the numbers I have now (the two morphs are, for all intents and purposes the same in SVL). Head widths, eye diameters, tympanum diameters, etc seem to be different between the two. I'm measuring Almirante frogs right now, and I'm rather interested in seeing how they compare.

In regards to the Brunos, I have to figure out where exactly those are, but I would like to get information on them too.


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## AzureFrog (Feb 3, 2009)

EXCELLENT!!! 

Keep posting!


Peace
Shawn


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## ChrisK (Oct 28, 2008)

Haha I keep looking at these, then going to look at mine, then coming back to look at these, then looking at mine...............


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## donstr (Jun 21, 2007)

Amazing shots of amazing frogs! Nice work, JP. 

These have to be my favorite locality of pumilio.


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## rozdaboff (Feb 27, 2005)

Fantastic stuff.

Keep up the good work JP.


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## lamaster (Mar 22, 2008)

WOW! very cool! It is amazing to see all the different variation in colors in the morph.


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## Philsuma (Jul 18, 2006)

......got to get down there.


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## Bananaman (Mar 21, 2009)

awesome post and pictures! thanks for sharing


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## GeorgiaB (Apr 23, 2009)

Gorgeous keep up the good work!! Thanks for taking the time to post them here 

Georgia


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## ChrisK (Oct 28, 2008)

JP did you get any habitat pics of the area?


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## MonarchzMan (Oct 23, 2006)

I didn't get anything of Uyama (actually the spot where we were had all of the understory cleared). I'd say that other habitat pictures I got would be indistinguishable from the Uyama habitat (unless of course, you consider bullet ants on just about every tree part of the habitat, in which case, that seemed to be unique to the Uyama habitat...)


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## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

great shots, amazing how much variation there is among these guys.


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