# Amazonicus' new name?



## wildman (Dec 21, 2008)

What are they now classified as? Feel free to bump to the beginner thread.


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## btcope (Jan 7, 2009)

I believe it's R. Ventrimaculata "Iquitos". Check out the Ranitomeya section of the "species" page. 

-brett


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## skylsdale (Sep 16, 2007)

Check out the last paragraph on this page: Dendrobates.org - Ranitomeya ventrimaculata


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## Darmon (Feb 25, 2009)

Does this mean that Amazonicus should now be referred to as Iquitos?


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## james67 (Jun 28, 2008)

they are R. ventrimiculata 

james


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## skylsdale (Sep 16, 2007)

What James said.

But there are various ventrimaculata that have been brought in at various times, many most likely from the Iquitos region, but that should not be mixed together. Having spoken with Mark Pepper about this, the likelihood that all of these Iquitos-type vents are from the same population are pretty slim, and without locale data, it's completely impossible to know...and so best to keep them seperate. So using the "Iquitos" label to refer to ANY frog from the Iquitos region could be messy.

However, Understory Enterprises does have a site-specific Iquitos frog, which they call Iquitos and I believe also have a code for. There are some red Iquitos-type frogs that have originated from Todd Kelley (that many call 'Red Vents') and that Todd and I have dubbed "Iquitos"...putting the term in quotations because they are from this area, but we don't have site-specific date (they were collected alongside striped reticulata, which is a population of reticulata found in the Iquitos area). It would probably be good to figure out something better than just the quote marks to differentiate between them.

And then there are the orange-ish ventrimaculata that are out there. Some people break them up into orange, red-orange, orange red, yellow-orange...but from what I remember, they are all the same and don't have any locale info and can most likely be mixed (unless you know different frogs from this group came from seperate importations).


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## btcope (Jan 7, 2009)

Ron, are you working on the TMP for R. Ventrimaculata? You seem to have a ton of info about this. 

-brett


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## skylsdale (Sep 16, 2007)

Hi Brett, I'm not...but George (ggazonas) has put a ton of time and effort into a ventrimaculata TMP, but it isn't quite finished. *And, in looking at my notes, I need to correct a mistake in the post above!*

I was working with Todd on a few of these populations/morphs, and in order to put them out there to people, we wanted to really know what we were working with and how they should be grouped, bred, managed, etc. You look at so many pictures and start to think you see patterns and commanalities between frogs, and then you want to make certain associations so you can _know_ what it is you have...but in talking with Mark, he said the diversity in the wild of ventrimaculata populations is absolutely mind-blowing. You can have one frog...and the next population over looks totally different...but then the population beyond that looks like the first population, but it's isolated from the first so it can't be, etc. So it's really complicated. 

As I said, we know that the "Red Vents" (what I said above about the frogs is the opposite) are from Iquitos because they were originally collected along with a striped form of reticulata (the collectors thought they were the same species). However, upon importation, someone noticed they were two different species and seperated out the ventrimaculata, and Todd ended up with the whole founding group for that population. Here is an image of one of them:










The image doesn't do it completely justice: these frogs get a brilliant red head which transitions into a bright yellow color. Also, they seem to generally mature into a bigger-sized frog than the "Iquitos" ventrimaculata, which are pictured below. 

Regarding the frogs below (the "Iquitos" but non-UE frogs) I think they have been split into various populations in the hobby based on phenotype (red-orange, orange-red, etc.), but if I remember correctly, they either came in together or have been already mixed so much with each other that keeping them seperate doesn't really matter anymore:



















There is also an amazing yellow/gold form that we ended up referring to as "Peruvian Gold" or "Yellow Peruvian" that is a stunning frog, especially in person. I think most of these originally came into the hobby through Chuck Powell:










I believe (but could be wrong) that these represent the three primary captive populations of ventrimaculata in the hobby outside of the UE frogs...although I could be wrong and there might have been some other European imports I am unaware of or haven't tracked. George would probably know.


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## wildman (Dec 21, 2008)

So where do the UE "Blackwater" and "Borja Ridge" fit? Are they also the initial amazonicus? Is there a difference in boldness or other behavior characteristics that set them apart & allows one to differentiate them through observation? Do some do better in groups then others? On UE's site these 3 populations look like a variation on a theme rather than distinct species. Are they genetically discrete or only discrete in behavior? Does their courtship behavior differ enough to isolate them as species?

I am still vague as to why we isolate different populations of the same species in the hobby (NOT that I am going to mix them). It would seem to me that if all of the different tinc morphologies are a variation on a theme & can interbreed, who are we to isolate them? Like, why can't a Swede & a Namibian have a baby? They are geographically & phenotypically isolated but that doesn't mean they can't have a kid (unless, of course, the Swede is a neo-Nazi  ). So what is the rationale behind the isolation? Or, why the God Complex?


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## edwing206 (Apr 9, 2008)

We should try to keep the frogs as close as we can to wild populations. Oophaga pumilio is a perfect example of this, there are more than a dozen different populations, for example cayo de agua which are typically green with a yellowish underside comes from a completely different area than say the darkland, which are mostly all blue. They are the same species but different populations that don't mix in the wild, so why mix them in captivity? Of course sometimes frogs will cross paths naturally but that's not something we should do in captivity.


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## Chris Miller (Apr 20, 2009)

Rainer Schulte a "scientist" split the red colored ventrimaculata from Amazonian Peru into their own species, in attempt to separate them from Ecuadorean, Brazilian and French Guyanan yellow ventrimaculata. He called this new species: amazonicus. So, pretty much everyone in the hobby started calling their red vents amazonicus. 

Amazonicus is now used as a catch all term for red vents without locality or import info. Understory frogs have locality information and are all from distinct populations. In fact the Iquitos frogs and Blackwater frogs are separated by many miles, rivers and even a population of yellow vents.

In the dart frog hobby, people don't interbreed frogs that would never come into contact naturally. It's not a god complex and drawing parallels to humans isn't valid as we've (or our genes) found a way to eliminate population sinks (barriers that separate populations) through boats, autos and airplanes.


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## ggazonas (May 11, 2008)

I was working on it by I've been sidetracked by alot of factors, getting married, moving, buying a house, getting a new job, and so on. Unfortunately its in it last stages of being edited, but some of the info might be outdated since I started this 2 years ago.

If anyone wants to help feel free to pm me.


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