Ameerega silverstonei

Silverstone's poison frog (Ameerega silverstonei) is a frog.  It lives in Peru.

Body
This frog has red and black or red and orange colors. Scientists say this is to tell predators that it is poisonous. The adult male frog is about 38.3 mm long from nose to rear end and the adult female frog is about 42.8 mm long. The head is as wide as the body and the nose is round.  This frog has teeth in its upper jaw.  The male frog has a sac that it uses to call. There is no webbed skin on any of the four feet. There are disks on the toes for climbing.  There is more red or orange color near the front of the body, and the back legs are almost all black. The belly can be black to light orange in color. The bottoms of the feet can be gray or bright orange.

Home
This frog lives in Peru in the Cordillera Azul (Blue Ridge).  This is on the east side of the Andes Mountains. This frog is awake during the day. It lives in tropical forests on mountains. People see it under logs and under piles of leaves. Sometimes people see it in places inside the forest that don't have many trees and near tea farms. Scientists saw the frog between 1200 and 1800 meters above sea level.

One of the places the frog lives is a protected parks: Parque Nacional Cordillera Azul.

Poison
This frog makes chemicals that come out in its skin. These chemicals are pumiliotoxin-A alkaloids.  Unlike other poison dart frogs, they do not make batrachotoxin alkaloids, which are more powerful poison.  Scientists saw a frog-eating snake catch an A. silverstonei frog, but it let it go immediately. The snake then looked sick and tried to rub its mouth on branches. The snake did not die. Scientists think this means that the frog had enough poison to stop other animals that want to eat it.

Young
The male frog makes a sound called a trill to the female frogs. The female frog lays her eggs on the dead leaves on the ground. The male frog watches the eggs. After the eggs hatch, the male frogs carry the tadpoles to water, for example streams and puddles. Scientists saw one male frog watching one group of eggs that had 30 eggs in it.

The tadpoles start out gray or brown-black in color and slowly get some yellow color as they get older and bigger.  Their brown parts slowly become black and their yellow parts become light orange or red as they become small frogs.  The small frogs have the same colors as adults after 12 months.

Danger
Scientists say this frog is in big danger of dying out. Humans change the places where the frog lives. People cut down forests to make places for cows to eat grass and to make farms. For example, they make farms for tea, which is legal, and for drug plants, which are not legal. People also catch this frog to sell as a pet, even though this is against the law. Scientists believe that most captured frogs die before reaching their new homes as people's pets. Scientists also say that climate change could hurt this frog.

References

Category:Frogs of South America
Category:Poison dart frogs