Phyllobates

Phyllobates is a group of frogs with poison in their skin. They live in Central America and South America, from Nicaragua to Colombia. There are three different Colombian species of Phyllobates. They have strong poison.

Phyllobates
P. terribilis
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Amphibia
Order:	Anura
Family:	Dendrobatidae
Genus:	Phyllobates Duméril and Bibron, 1841
Species
6, see text

The most poisonous frog in the world is in Phyllobates: The golden poison frog (P. terribilis). All the frogs in Phyllobates have bright colors on their skins. This tells other animals not to eat the frog, even though some of them do not have poison. Native South Americans use Phyllobates frogs to put poison on the tools they use to hunt animals for food. The frogs' poison is made of alkaloids molecules, and the frogs make them in glands in their skins. The strongest poison is batrachotoxin.^[1]

Name

Phyllobates is Ancient Greek for "leaf climber."

Groups

Scientists used to say that Phyllobates had many more frogs, but they moved some of them to Ranitomeya.^[2] However, it now just contains those six members within the Phyllobates bicolor species group. These are:

Group	Image	Common name	Scientific name	Distribution
P. lugubris species group		Lovely poison frog	Phyllobates lugubris (Schmidt, 1857)	southeastern Nicaragua through Costa Rica to northwestern Panama
		Golfodulcean poison frog	Phyllobates vittatus (Cope, 1893)	Costa Rica.
P. bicolor species group		black-legged poison frog	Phyllobates bicolor (Duméril and Bibron, 1841)	Chocó area in western Colombia
		Kokoe Poison Frog	Phyllobates aurotaenia (Boulenger, 1913)	Pacific coast of Colombia
			Phyllobates sp. aff. aurotaenia [3]
		Golden poison frog	Phyllobates terribilis (Myers, Daly, and Malkin, 1978)	Pacific coast of Colombia.

Every species in Phyllobates can be different colors. Frogs can be in the same species and look different. These are called color morphs. For example, P. terribilis frogs come in color morphs called "mint," "yellow," or "orange." P. vittatus, another example, always has black skin, but its stripes can be yellow, orange, or red, wide or narrow. Its legs can be blue or green. The bicolor dart frog (Phyllobates bicolor) can be yellow to orange, from black legs to green legs. P. aurotaenia can be yellow-banded or orange. They are always smaller than P. vittatus, so people tell them apart by which frog is bigger instead of by color.

Poison

Scientists have only found the batrachotoxin poison in wild frogs. Frogs that live with humans stop making poison. Scientists think the frogs need to eat wild foods to make the poison. Some beetles in Papua New Guinea also have batrachotoxin poison.^[4]

See also

• Allopumiliotoxin 267A
• Pumiliotoxin 251D