Allobates femoralis (Boulenger, 1884)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Superfamily: Dendrobatoidea > Family: Aromobatidae > Subfamily: Allobatinae > Genus: Allobates > Species: Allobates femoralis

Prostherapis femoralis Boulenger, 1884 "1883", Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1883: 635. Syntypes: BMNH 1947.2.14.21–22; UMMZ 48070 considered a "cotype" (presumably exchanged from BMNH) by Peters, 1952, Occas. Pap. Mus. Zool. Univ. Michigan, 539: 21. BMNH 1947.2.14.21 designated lectotype by Silverstone, 1976, Sci. Bull. Nat. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co., 27: 31. Type locality: "Yurimaguas, Huallaga River, [Loreto,] Northern Peru".

Phyllobates femoralis — Barbour and Noble, 1920, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., 63: 401; Silverstone, 1976, Sci. Bull. Nat. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co., 27: 5.

Dendrobates femoralis — Myers, Daly, and Malkin, 1978, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 161: 332.

Epipedobates femoralis — Myers, 1987, Pap. Avulsos Zool., São Paulo, 36: 303.

Allobates femoralis — Zimmermann and Zimmermann, 1988, Salamandra, 24: 137; Clough and Summers, 2000, Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 70: 515–540.

Allobates femoralis — Grant, Frost, Caldwell, Gagliardo, Haddad, Kok, Means, Noonan, Schargel, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 299: 162.

Common Names

Brilliant-thighed Poison Frog (Walls, 1994, Jewels of the Rainforest: 25; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 50).

Brilliant-thighed Poison-arrow Frog (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 49).

Distribution

Lowland forests of eastern Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, and of the Amazon drainage of Colombia (Meta to Putumayo to Vaupés and Amazonas), eastern Ecuador (provinces of Napo, Orellana, Pastaza, Sucumbíos, and Morona Santiago), Peru (Loreto and Ucayali), Bolivia, and Brazil (Amazonas, Acre, and Amapá); dense forests of the Napo and Pastaza drainages of Ecuador, east of the Andes; southern Cordillera Oriental of Peru.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela

Comment

See comment under Phyllobates aurotaenia (Dendrobatidae). Duellman, 1978, Misc. Publ. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas, 65: 126–127, provided a brief account including characterization of call and tadpole. Zimmerman and Bogart, 1984, Acta Amazonica, 14: 473–520, reported on vocalization. Clough and Summers, 2000, Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 70: 515–540, suggested that Allobates femoralis is likely a species complex as well as the sister taxon of the toxic dendrobatids, although this latter point is not consistent with the results of Grant, Frost, Caldwell, Gagliardo, Haddad, Kok, Means, Noonan, Schargel, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 299. Lescure and Marty, 2000, Collect. Patrimoines Nat., Paris, 45: 94–95, provided a brief account (as Epipedobates femoralis) and photo. Rodríguez and Duellman, 1994, Univ. Kansas Mus. Nat. Hist. Spec. Publ., 22: 17–18, provided a brief account as Epipedobates femoralis. Schulte, 1999, Pfeilgiftfrösche: 253–260, provided an account. See De la Riva, Köhler, Lötters, and Reichle, 2000, Rev. Esp. Herpetol., 14: 29, for Bolivian record. Barrio-Amorós, 2004, Rev. Ecol. Lat. Am., 9: 9, reported on distribution and noted that the record for Amazonian Venezuela was based on a specimen of Epipedobates guanayensis (now Ameerega picta). Fouquet, Gilles, Vences, Marty, Blanc, and Gemmell, 2007, PLoS One, 10 (e1109): 1–10, provided molecular evidence that this is a species complex. See account by Lötters, Jungfer, Henkel, and Schmidt, 2007, Poison Frogs: 304–310, where the call was described as well as habitat, range, and morphology. Amézquita, Lima, Jehle, Castellanos, Ramos, Crawford, Gasser, and Hödl, 2009, Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 98: 826–838, reported on geographic variation in calls, morphology, and molecular markers. Simões, Lima, and Farias, 2010, Zootaxa, 2406: 1–28, noted that populations in the state of Acre are more closely related to Allobates hodli than to more distant populations of nominal Allobates femoralis. Bernarde, Machado, and Turci, 2011, Biota Neotrop., 11: 117–144, reported specimens from Reserva Extrativista Riozinho da Liberdade, Acre, Brazil. Barrio-Amorós and Santos, 2010, Check List, 6: 208–209, provided records for the state of Bolívar, eastern Venezuela. See account for Suriname population by Ouboter and Jairam, 2012, Amph. Suriname: 20–22. See Cole, Townsend, Reynolds, MacCulloch, and Lathrop, 2013, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 125: 370, for brief account of population in Guyana. Simões, Lima, and Farias, 2012, Conserv. Genetics, 13: 1145–1159, reported on a hybrid zone in western Amazonia with Allobates hodli. Grant, Rada, Anganoy-Criollo, Batista, Dias, Jeckel, Machado, and Rueda-Almonacid, 2017, S. Am. J. Herpetol., 12 (Special Issue): 1–90, provided phylogenetic results that suggests that nominal Allobates femoralis is composed of several lineages, some of which are closer to other species. Motta, Menin, Almeida, and Hrbek, 2018, Zootaxa, 4438: 79–104, on the basis of 16S rRNA sequence divergence suggested that this nominal species is composed of at least two species, one in central Amazonia and the other in southern Amazonia. Schlüter, 1980, Salamandra, 16: 149–161, Zimmerman, 1983, Herpetologica, 39: 235–246, Zimmerman and Bogart, 1988, J. Herpetol., 22: 97–108, and Lescure and Marty, 2000, Collect. Patrimoines Nat., Paris, 45: 235–246. Duellman, 2005, Cusco Amazonico: 189–191, provided an account (adult and larval morphology, description of the call, life history). See Barrio-Amorós, Rojas-Runjaic, and Señaris, 2019, Amph. Rept. Conserv., 13 (1: e180): 33, for comments on range, taxonomy, and literature. Fouquet, Vidal, and Dewynter, 2019, Zoosystema, 41: 367, noted that this likely represents a species complex. For identification of larvae (as Epipedobates femoralis) in central Amazonia, Brazil, see Hero, 1990, Amazoniana, 11: 201–262. Señaris and Rojas-Runjaic, 2020, in Rull and Carnaval (eds.), Neotrop. Divers. Patterns Process.: 571–632, commented on range and conservation status in the Venezuelan Guayana. França and Venâncio, 2010, Biotemas, 23: 71–84, provided a record for the municipality of Boca do Acre, Amazonas, with a brief discussion of the range. See brief account by Villacampa-Ortega, Serrano-Rojas, and Whitworth, 2017, Amph. Manu Learning Cent.: 28–29. Metcalf, Marsh, Torres Pacaya, Graham, and Gunnels, 2020, Herpetol. Notes, 13: 753–767, reported the species from the Santa Cruz Forest Reserve, Loreto, northeastern Peru. Taucce, Costa-Campos, Carvalho, and Michalski, 2022, Eur. J. Taxon., 836: 96–130, reported on distribution, literature, and conservation status for Amapá, Brazil. Peignier, Furdi, Bégué, and Ringler, 2022, Herpetol. Notes, 15: 723–727, provided a larval staging table. Schiesari, Rossa-Feres, Menin, and Hödl, 2022, Zootaxa, 5223: 23–25, detailed larval and metamorph morphology and natural history. Gagliardi-Urrutia, García Dávila, Jaramillo-Martinez, Rojas-Padilla, Rios-Alva, Aguilar-Manihuari, Pérez-Peña, Castroviejo-Fisher, Simões, Estivals, Guillen Huaman, Castro Ruiz, Angulo Chávez, Mariac, Duponchelle, and Renno, 2022, Anf. Loreto: 36–37, provided a brief account, dot map, and genetic barcode for Loreto, Peru. Crnobrna, Santa-Cruz Farfan, Gallegos, López-Rojas, Llanqui, Panduro Pisco, and Kelsen Arbaiza, 2023, Check List, 19: 437, provided a record from Ucayali Province, central-easter Peru. 

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