Ameerega picta (Tschudi, 1838)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Superfamily: Dendrobatoidea > Family: Dendrobatidae > Subfamily: Colostethinae > Genus: Ameerega > Species: Ameerega picta

Hylaplesia picta Tschudi, 1838, Classif. Batr.: 28. Syntypes: MNHNP 4910 (2 specimens, according to Guibé, 1950 "1948", Cat. Types Amph. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat.: 32); male (MNHNP 4910?) designated lectotype by Silverstone, 1976, Sci. Bull. Nat. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co., 27: 42; MNHNP 4910 designated lectotype by Lescure, 1976, Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat. Paris, Ser. 3, Zool., 377: 487. Type locality: "Santa Cruz", Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Dendrobates pictus — Duméril and Bibron, 1841, Erp. Gen., 6: 656.

Dendrobates eucnemis Steindachner, 1864, Verh. Zool. Bot. Ges. Wien, 14: 258. Syntypes: NHMW 19190.1–4; NHMW 19190.3 designated lectotype by Silverstone, 1976, Sci. Bull. Nat. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co., 27: 42. Type locality: Rio Mamoré, Rondônia, Brazil. Name attributed by Steindachner to Fitzinger, but clearly Steindachner is responsible for the description. Synonymy by Lutz, 1952, Mem. Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, 50: 597–607.

Dendrobates pictus pictus — Lutz, 1952, Mem. Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, 50: 601.

Dendrobates pictus eucnemis — Lutz, 1952, Mem. Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, 50: 607.

Dendrobates pictus guayanensis Heatwole, Solano, and Heatwole, 1965, Acta Biol. Venezuelica, 4: 350. Holotype: MBUCV 3112, by original designation. Type locality: "forest between Rancho Alegre and base of Altiplanicie, on trail to Quebrada Cabeza de Burro, 5 km east of Las Chicharras, 47 km north of Tumeremo. Altiplanicie de Nuria, 100–250 m.", Bolivar, Venezuela.

Phyllobates pictus — Silverstone, 1975, Sci. Bull. Nat. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co., 21: 11.

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

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

Epipedobates guayanensis — Barrio-Amorós, 2004, Rev. Ecol. Lat. Am., 9: 9. 

Epipedobates yungicola Lötters, Schmitz, and Reichle, 2005, Herpetozoa, Wien, 18: 117. Holotype: CBF 3900, by original designation. Type locality: "km 10 on road from Caranavi to Yolosa (15° 53′ 17″ S, 67° 33′ 09″ W, ca. 600 m above sea level), Yungas de La Paz, Provincia Caranavi, Departamento La Paz, Bolivia". Synonymy by Guillory, French, Twomey, Chávez, Prates, von May, De la Riva, Lötters, Reichle, Serrano-Rojas, Whitworth, and Brown, 2020, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 142 (106638): 8. 

Ameerega yungicola — Frost, 2006, Amph. Spec. World, vers. 4.0.

Ameerega picta — Frost, Grant, Faivovich, Bain, Haas, Haddad, de Sá, Channing, Wilkinson, Donnellan, Raxworthy, Campbell, Blotto, Moler, Drewes, Nussbaum, Lynch, Green, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 297: 130, by implication; Grant, Frost, Caldwell, Gagliardo, Haddad, Kok, Means, Noonan, Schargel, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 299: 164.

Common Names

Spot-legged Poison Frog (Walls, 1994, Jewels of the Rainforest: 26; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 50).

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

Distribution

Widely distributed in the lowlands of the Departamentos Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Beni, and La Paz, in eastern Bolivia, and Corumbá and Xavantina, Mato Grosso do Sul, in southwestern Brazil; possibly into adjacent Paraguay (see comment); Departmento Ucayali, Peru, also eastern slope of the Cordillera Oriental (south of Macarena), Amazonia, Colombia, 200–2500 m elevation. Apparently isolated population in Bolivar, Venezuela.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela

Comment

 Duellman, 1978, Misc. Publ. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas, 65: 125–126, provided a brief account and characterization of the call. Lescure, 1976, Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat. Paris, Ser. 3, Zool., 377: 475–524, reported on larval morphology. Noted to be composed of two or more distinct species, according to Caldwell and Myers, 1990, Am. Mus. Novit., 2988: 19, and Henle, 1992, Bonn. Zool. Beitr., 43: 79–129, although these may correspond to those subsequently resurrected by Haddad and Martins, 1994, Herpetologica, 50: 282–295 (who also provided accounts). De la Riva, Márquez, and Bosch, 1996, J. Nat. Hist., London, 30: 1413–1420, discussed advertisement call. De la Riva, Köhler, Lötters, and Reichle, 2000, Rev. Esp. Herpetol., 14: 30, also note the composite nature of this binominal. See brief account by Köhler, 2000, Bonn. Zool. Monogr., 48: 91–93. See distributional comments by Gorzula and Señaris, 1999 "1998", Scient. Guaianae, 8: 26. Lötters, Jungfer, Henkel, and Schmidt, 2007, Poison Frogs: 354–358, provided an account and placed this species in their Ameerega picta group. Brusquetti and Lavilla, 2006, Cuad. Herpetol., 20: 28, suggested that this species likely occurs in Paraguay. Schulze, Jansen, and Köhler, 2015, Zootaxa, 4016: 20–21, characterized the larva.  See Barrio-Amorós, Rojas-Runjaic, and Señaris, 2019, Amph. Rept. Conserv., 13 (1: e180): 50–51, for comments on range, taxonomy, and literature. Brown, Siu-Ting, von May, Twomey, Guillory, Deutsch, and Chávez, 2019, Zootaxa, 4712: 211–235, mapped the species in Peru and included it in their Ameerega rubriventris complex. Guillory, French, Twomey, Chávez, Prates, von May, De la Riva, Lötters, Reichle, Serrano-Rojas, Whitworth, and Brown, 2020, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 142 (106638): 1–13, discussed the ambiguous phylogenetic placement. 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.  

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