Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Search tool	Example of search string in box	What that means to the database
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	Hyl*	Will find all uses of "Hyl . . ." anywhere in a record: e.g., Hylarana, Hyla, Hylidae, Hylinae, Hylaedactyla.
* = "wildcard". Allows a partial letter string to be entered and implies either no or various extension on this letter string	*Hyla	Will find all uses of ". . . hyla" anywhere in a record: e.g., Hyla, Hylidae, Plectrohyla, Ptychadena hylaea, Adenomera hylaedactyla
Single word	Hyla	Will find all records that contain stand-alone uses of Hyla: e.g., Hyla, Hyla arenicolor
Strings of words without quotation marks	Lithobates pipiens	Interprets this as "Lithobates OR pipiens" so will find the union of all records that contain either "Lithobates" or "pipiens": e.g., Lithobates omiltemanus, Hylorana pipiens
Strings of word with quotation marks	"Lithobates pipiens"	Interprets this as "Lithobates AND pipiens" so will return all records that have the character string "Lithobates pipiens" anywhere within a record: e.g., all members of the Lithobates pipiens complex.
AND statement. Means that the results of the search must include both words held together by an AND	Lithobates AND pipiens	Same as "Lithobates pipiens"
OR statement. Means that the results of the search will all records that have either of the terms held together by an OR	Lithobates OR "Costa Rica"	Recovers all records that contain the word "Lithobates" or "Costa Rica": 402 records inasmuch as this will include all records for the entire amphibian fauna of Costa Rica
Combining Boolean operators within the Basic Search box (AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks)	Lithobates AND "Costa Rica" NOT forreri	Recovers only records that contain the word Lithobates AND "Costa Rica", but excludes any record that contains the word "forreri" in any part of the record: 9 records
Printable HELP file

Dendrobates auratus (Girard, 1855)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Superfamily: Dendrobatoidea > Family: Dendrobatidae > Subfamily: Dendrobatinae > Genus: Dendrobates > Species: Dendrobates auratus

Phyllobates auratus Girard, 1855 "1854", Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 7: 226. Holotype: Not stated; probably USNM 10307 according to Dunn, 1941, Copeia, 1941: 88; stated to be USNM 10307 by Cochran, 1961, Bull. U.S. Natl. Mus., 220: 69. Type locality: "Island of Taboga, in the Bay of Panama".

Dendrobates latimaculatus Günther, 1859 "1858", Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus.: 125. Holotype: BMNH 1852.12.11.8, according to Silverstone, 1975, Sci. Bull. Nat. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co., 21: 40. Type locality: "Isthmus of Darien [Panama]". Tentative synonymy by Taylor, 1952, Univ. Kansas Sci. Bull., 35: 635. Synonymy by Silverstone, 1975, Sci. Bull. Nat. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co., 21: 11, 40.

Hylaplesia aurata — Cope, 1863, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 15: 49.

Dendrobates tinctorius var. auratus — Steindachner, 1864, Verh. Zool. Bot. Ges. Wien, 14: 261.

Dendrobates trivittatus var. aurata — Peters, 1873, Monatsber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Berlin, 1873: 618.

Dendrobates amoenus Werner, 1901, Verh. Zool. Bot. Ges. Wien, 51: 627. Holotype: NHMW 16514 (formerly 1904.111.95) according to Dunn, 1941, Copeia, 1941: 88, and Häupl and Tiedemann, 1978, Kat. Wiss. Samml. Naturhist. Mus. Wien, 2: 16 (formerly in Zoologisches Museum Königsberg, Germany). Type locality: "Costa Rica". Synonymy by Dunn, 1941, Copeia, 1941: 88; Savage, 1968, Copeia, 1968: 759–760.

Dendrobates auratus — Dunn, 1931, Occas. Pap. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 5: 393; Cochran, 1961, Living Amph. World: 107.

Hylaplesia tinctoria latimaculata — Dunn, 1941, Copeia, 1941: 88. Attributed incorrectly to Günther, 1859 "1858", Cat. Batr. Sal. Coll. Brit. Mus.: 125.

Dendrobates tinctorius auratus — Laurent, 1942, Bull. Mus. R. Hist. Nat. Belg., 18: 12.

Common Names

Gold Arrow-poison Frog (Cochran, 1961, Living Amph. World: 84).

Green and Black Poison Frog (Walls, 1994, Jewels of the Rainforest: 20; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 49).

Green and Black Poison-dart Frog (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 48).

Green and Black Poison-arrow Frog (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 48).

Green Poison-arrow Frog (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 48).

Green and Golden Poison-arrow Frog (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 48).

Golden Poison-arrow Frog (Ananjeva, Borkin, Darevsky, and Orlov, 1988, Dict. Amph. Rept. Five Languages: 48).

Green Poison Frog (CITES).

Distribution

Humid lowlands from southern Nicaragua to the Golfo de Urabá in Colombia on the Caribbean and on the Pacific versant from southwestern Costa Rica through Panama to the lower Atrato River drainage of western Colombia, 0–800 m elevation; introduced in Oahu, Hawaii, USA.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama

Introduced: United States of America, United States of America - Hawaii

Comment

See account by Savage, 1968, Copeia, 1968: 759–760, and Silverstone, 1975, Sci. Bull. Nat. Hist. Mus. Los Angeles Co., 21: 40. Lips and Savage, 1996, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 109: 17–26, included this species in a key to the tadpoles found in Costa Rica. See account by Savage, 2002, Amph. Rept. Costa Rica: 383–384, Lötters, Jungfer, Henkel, and Schmidt, 2007, Poison Frogs: 531–538, provided an account. See comments by Sunyer, Páiz, Dehling, and Köhler, 2009, Herpetol. Notes, 2: 189–202, regarding Nicaraguan populations. Lannoo and Nanjappa, 2005, in Lannoo (ed.), Amph. Declines: 440–441, and Dodd, 2013, Frogs U.S. and Canada, 2: 809–811, provided accounts that summarized the relevant literature for the introduced Hawaii population. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 131–136, provided a key to the species of Dendrobates in Central America and provided a map and photographs of the species. Zug, 2013, Rept. Amph. Pacific Is.: 61–62, provided a brief account of the Hawaiian population and photograph. Altig and McDiarmid, 2015, Handb. Larval Amph. US and Canada: 188–189, provided an account of larval morphology and biology. Lawrence, Jordan, and Urquhart, 2017 "2016", Herpetol. Rev., 47: 622, provided the southern-most record in Nicaragua and briefly discussed the range. Martínez-Fonseca, Holmes, Sunyer, Westeen, Grundler, Cerda, Fernández-Mena, Loza-Molina, Monagan, Nondorf, Pandelis, and Rabosky, 2024, Check List, 20: 68, provided and discussed a record from Refugio Bartola, Departamento Río San Juan, Nicaragua, 60 m elevation. Introduced population in Oahu, Hawaii, USA, discussed and mapped by Meshaka, Collins, Bury, and McCallum, 2022, Exotic Amph. Rept. USA: 35–36.

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To search the NIH genetic sequence database, see GenBank
For additional information see AmphibiaWeb report
For information on conservation status and distribution see the IUCN Redlist
For information on distribution, habitat, and conservation see the Map of Life
For related information on conservation and images as well as observations see iNaturalist
For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.