Ranitomeya sirensis

The Biolat poison frog, bamboo poison frog, Sira poison frog, or Pasco poison frog (Ranitomeya variabilis) is a frog.  It lives in the Amazon rainforest in Peru  and Bolivia.

Body
The adult male frog is 15-17 mm long from nose to rear end. The frogs that live in the Sira mountains have red skin on their backs, and the legs are light blue-green. Their bellies are blue-green with one red mark each.  Frogs in other places are black with yellow stripes.  This is called a color morph: The frogs are the same species but they have different colors.  These frogs have disks on their toes for climbing.

Name
Scientists gave this frog the Latin name sirensis because of the place where they saw the frog: Serranía de Sira.

Home
This frog is awake during the day. It lives in  rainforests that have been cut down and are growing back. People have seen this frog between 200 and 1560 meters above sea level. This frog can sometimes live on farms, for example coffee farms, but it does not live on farms where the plants grow close together and there is only one type of plant.

Young
Only the male frog takes care of the young.  After the eggs hatch, the male frog carries the tadpoles to different pools of water inside bamboo plants or other plants. The tadpoles eat what they find there, for example baby mosquitoes.

Danger
Scientists believe this frog is not danger of dying out because it lives in a large place. But it is in some danger because people catch this frog to sell as a pet.  The frog can become locally endangered, meaning that even though there are many R. sirensis frogs on planet Earth, there are suddenly very few in a place where there used to be many. Because this frog has different color morphs, and because some pet owners think the colors are interesting or pretty, people catch the frogs that are that color morph, and they can become very rare in some places. Scientists say that countries should pass laws against catching frogs in just those places. This frog is also in danger from habitat loss because people cut down forests to make farms.

Some of the places this frog lives are protected parks, for example Yanachaga Chemillén National Park, Reserva Comunal El Sira, Manu National Park, Bahuaja-Sonene National Park and Tambopata National Reserve.

References

Category:Frogs of South America