Allobates paleovarzensis

The Amazonian nurse frog (Allobates paleovarzensis) is a frog.  It lives in Brazil and Colombia.

Body
The adult male frog is 18.27 – 22.42  mm long from nose to rear end and the adult female frog is 18.67 – 21.57 mm long. The male frog has a longer head than the female frog does.  The colors on the frog's skin help it hide in the forest. The skin of the frog's back is light brown in color. It is darkest on the head. There are tan stripes on the top-sides of the body. The legs are light brown in color with dark brown hard spots. Some frogs have thin, dark brown stripes on the back legs and back feet. The adult female frog has a yellow throat, chest, and belly. Adult male frogs have a gray-purple throat, a light chest, and dark spots on the vocal sac on its chest that it uses to call.  Adult frogs have a narrow white stripe from the face to where the back legs meet the body.

Food
The tadpoles eat plants and dead insects that they find in the water. The older the tadpoles are, the more they eat things that used to be animals. Adult frogs eat insects. They catch the insects with their tongues.

Name
Scientists named this frog paleovarzensis because it lives in paleovárzeas. The paleovárzeas were flood plains of the Amazon River long ago in the past. But the rivers that flow through them now do not flood.

Home
This frog lives in the dead leaves on the ground in rainforests that have never been cut down. It only lives in places that used to flood long ago in the past but do not flood now. These places are called paleovárzea. The streams in the paleovarzeas have more food chemicals in them than streams that flood do. Scientists saw the frog between 40 and 80 meters above sea level.

The frog lives in some protected places, for example Rio Negro Right Bank Environmental Protection Area and the Central Amazon Conservation Complex.

Young
The male frog sits on a leaf and calls. He has one call that he makes to tell other frogs he is there and one call that he makes to female frogs. He calls in the morning and late afternoon but not in the middle of the day from October to June. The male frogs try to get good places to call to females. The bigger the male frog's place is, the more female frogs will mate with him and the more young he will have. The female frog lays her eggs on dead leaves. She lays about 29 eggs at a time. The male frog watches the eggs until the tadpoles are big enough to move. The eggs take 21 days to hatch. The male frog carries the tadpoles to pools of water in streams. Scientists saw male frogs carrying as many as 60 tadpoles at the same time. This is the highest number of tadpoles that people have seen any frog in Allobates carry. After the male frog moves the tadpoles, he leaves the territory for that year.  The tadpoles take 88 days to become frogs, sometimes longer.

The tadpoles are yellow-brown in color with dark brown marks on their backs, sides, and tails. They have clear bellies. They have a dark brown mark from the nose over the eye to the middle of the body.

Danger
Scientists say that this frog is not in danger of dying out. In one place, near Manaus, people cut down many trees to build roads and buildings. In more places, people dig for good rocks and metal and cut down trees to get wood to build with.

First paper

References

Category:Frogs of South America