31/10/2024
Happy Halloween!
This is a beautiful black and orange poison frog species. The orange on the belly is sometimes yellow or even white. The taxonomy of this species was synonymized with Epipedobates espinosai earlier this year. Since this individual was photographed in Mindo, it used to be E. darwinwallacei. The common name can still be the Darwin Wallace poison frog, to continue to honour those scientists. It is the only poison frog in the area and it occasionally turns up on our public night walks, making it one of the more spectacularly coloured frog species that lives on our reserve. Ecuador currently has 53 species of poison/rocket frogs but none of them are dart frogs because their poison is not used to make poison darts, like members of the genus, Phyllobates, which are found north of Ecuador.
