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

Ranitomeya variabilis (Zimmermann and Zimmermann, 1988)

Class: Amphibia > Order: Anura > Superfamily: Dendrobatoidea > Family: Dendrobatidae > Subfamily: Dendrobatinae > Genus: Ranitomeya > Species: Ranitomeya variabilis

Dendrobates variabilis Zimmermann and Zimmermann, 1988, Salamandra, 24: 132. Holotype: SMNS 7054, by original designation. Type locality: "Departamento San Martin, Peru"; restricted to "Km 27 of the road from Tarapoto to Yurimaguas", Peru, by Henle, 1992, Bonn. Zool. Beitr., 43: 79-129.

Ranitomeya variabilis — Grant, Frost, Caldwell, Gagliardo, Haddad, Kok, Means, Noonan, Schargel, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 299: 171.

Common Names

Zimmermann's Poison Frog (Walls, 1994, Jewels of the Rainforest: 24).

Distribution

Amazonian rainforests of western Brazil (Amazonas), Colombia (Amazonas, Caquetá, Putumayo [tentative], Vaupés), Ecuador (Morona-Santiago, Napo, Orellana, Pastaza, Sucumbíos) and Peru (Amazonas, Loreto, San Martín, Ucayali); also in French Guiana and Amapá, Brazil.

Geographic Occurrence

Natural Resident: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Peru

Comment

Removed from the synonymy of Ranitomeya ventrimaculata (as Dendrobates) by Schulte, 1999, Pfeilgiftfrösche: 39, and Symula, Schulte, and Summers, 2001, Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. B, Biol. Sci., 268: 2415-2421, where it had been placed by Caldwell and Myers, 1990, Am. Mus. Novit., 2988: 1. Schulte, 1999, Pfeilgiftfrösche: 39-49, provided an account. Lötters, Jungfer, Henkel, and Schmidt, 2007, Poison Frogs: 500-503, provided an account and placed this species in their Ranitomeya ventrimaculata group. In the Ranitomeya variabilis species group of Brown, Twomey, Amézquita, Souza, Caldwell, Lötters, von May, Melo-Sampaio, Mejía-Vargas, Pérez-Peña, Pepper, Poelman, Sanchez-Rodriguez, and Summers, 2011, Zootaxa, 3083: 78, and who provided an account on page 85-89. Simões, Rojas-Runjaic, Gagliardi-Urrutia, and Castroviejo-Fisher, 2019, Herpetol. Notes, 12: 211–219, provided a record for Brazil (Estação Ecológica Juami-Japurá, municipality of Japurá, Amazonas, Brazil) and described the advertisement call. 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. Muell, Chávez, Prates, Guillory, Kahn, Twomey, Rodrigues, and Brown, 2022, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 168 (107389): 1–10, noted that previous records of Ranitomeya amazonica from French Guiana and adjacent Amapá, Brazil, are referrable to Ranitomeya variabilis. Taucce, Costa-Campos, Carvalho, and Michalski, 2022, Eur. J. Taxon., 836: 96–130, reported on distribution, literature, and conservation status for Amapá, Brazil. Regnet, Rech, Rödder, and Solé, 2023, ZooKeys, 1172: 131–153, reported on embryonic and larval development in captivity. Regnet, Lukas, Rödder, Wipfler, and Solé, 2023, Zoomorphology, 142: 477–486, reported on tadpole external and internal morphology.

External links:

Please note: these links will take you to external websites not affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History. We are not responsible for their content.

For access to general information see Wikipedia
For additional sources of general information from other websites search Google
For access to relevant technical literature search Google Scholar
For images search CalPhoto Images and Google Images
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 additional information specific to Ecuador see FaunaWebEcuador: Anfibios del Ecuador
For access to available specimen data for this species, from over 350 scientific collections, go to Vertnet.