Ranitomeya

***Ranitomeya*** is a group of frogs that live in Panama and South America. They are poison dart frogs.

## Taxonomy

In 2006, a group of amphibian scientists looked at the way scientists put frogs into groups. They changed some of the groups.  They took some frogs that had been in the groups _Dendrobates_, _Minyobates_, and _Phyllobates_ and put them in _Ranitomeya_ instead. In 2011, another team of scientists made the group _Andinobates_ for 12 frogs that had been in _Ranitomeya_.

_Ranitomeya_ and _Andinobates_ frogs are different from frogs in _Dendrobates_: They are smaller, have more than two colors, and look like glitter. _Ranitomeya_ frogs live in the Amazon basin, and _Andinobates_ frogs live in the northern Andes mountains and in Central America.

## Body

Adult frogs are  or smaller from nose to rear end and their skin is bright colors, for example bright yellow, red, or green on the back with stripes or dots. The throat also has color, usually yellow, orange or red. The head is narrower than the body. There are disks on the toes of all four feet for climbing. The disks on the front feet are larger than the disks on the back feet. Some species, for example R. Variabilis, have tadpoles that eat each other.

## Danger

Many _Ranitomeya_ species could die out because human beings change the places where they live and catch them to sell as pets.

## Species

There are 16 species of frog in the genus _Ranitomeya_:
|Image|Scientific name|Distribution|
| --- | --- | --- |
||_Ranitomeya amazonica_ <small>(Schulte, 1999)</small>|northeastern Amazonian Peru (Loreto Region, including the type locality) and extreme southeastern Colombia (Amazonas Department), and expected in the adjacent Brazil, Venezuela; extreme southern Guyana; eastern French Guiana; the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil|
||_Ranitomeya benedicta_ <small>Brown, Twomey, Pepper, and Sanchez-Rodriguez, 2008</small>||
||_Ranitomeya cyanovittata_ <small>Pérez-Peña, Chávez, Twomey, and Brown, 2010</small>|Pampas del Sacramento in southern Loreto and eastern San Martín Region, northeastern Peru|
||_Ranitomeya defleri_ <small>Twomey and Brown, 2009</small>|southeastern Colombia|
||_Ranitomeya fantastica_ <small>(Boulenger, 1884)</small>|eastern Sierra del Divisor, Loreto, Peru|
||_Ranitomeya flavovittata_ <small>(Schulte, 1999)</small>|northern San Martín and Loreto Regions, Peru|
||_Ranitomeya imitator_ <small>(Schulte, 1986)</small>|Loreto Region, Peru|
||_Ranitomeya reticulata_ <small>(Boulenger, 1884)</small>|eastern Peru.|
||_Ranitomeya sirensis_ <small>(Aichinger, 1991)</small>|Amazon rainforest in Peru and Ecuador.|
||_Ranitomeya summersi_ <small>Brown, Twomey, Pepper, and Sanchez-Rodriguez, 2008</small>|central Huallaga River drainage and adjacent Cordillera Azul National Park in central Peru|
||_Ranitomeya toraro_ <small>Brown, Caldwell, Twomey, Melo-Sampaio, and Souza, 2011</small>|western Brazil in the states of Acre and Amazonas, and in the north of Rondônia state|
||_Ranitomeya uakarii_ <small>(Brown, Schulte, and Summers, 2006)</small>|southern Peru (Madre de Dios), central Peru (Pachitea drainage), western Brazil (near Porto Walter), along the upper Amazon (in Peru and Colombia), and as far west as central Guyana.|
||_Ranitomeya vanzolinii_ <small>(Myers, 1982)</small>|Amazonian rainforests of Brazil and Peru|
||_Ranitomeya variabilis_ <small>(Zimmermann and Zimmermann, 1988)</small>|Huallaga River drainage of San Martín Region, Peru|
||_Ranitomeya ventrimaculata_ <small>(Shreve, 1935)</small>|Brazil, southeastern Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, and Peru.|
||_Ranitomeya yavaricola_ <small>Pérez-Peña, Chávez, Twomey, and Brown, 2010</small>|Rio Yavari-Mirin, Loreto, Peru|

_Dendrobates rubrocephalus_ <small>Schulte, 1999</small> is placed here _Incertae Sedis_.