Strawberry Poison Dart Frog

The strawberry poison dart frog is a small frog found in the humid lowlands and premontane forest from Nicaragua to Panama, and also in plantations and other disturbed areas. It is well known for its colour variation: about 15–30 colour morphs are thought to exist, most of them true-breeding, including the red body with blue legs that gave it the name 'blue jeans frog'. It is the most toxic member of its genus, though not the most poisonous of the poison frogs (Wikipedia, general species account).

The toxins are not made by the frog. It takes up alkaloids from the mites and ants it eats, and alkaloid profiles differ between populations and individuals as available prey differs. Adult females carry more alkaloids than males, and mothers feed their tadpoles unfertilised eggs after placing each one in a small pool of water, which also passes chemical defences to the young. The frog is active by day and mostly lives on the forest floor and in leaf litter (Wikipedia, general species account; AmphiBIO, Oliveira et al. 2017).

On this guide it is a target species of Tortuguero and La Selva.