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Mimic Poison Frog (Ranitomeya imitator) - Cordillera Escallera, Peru

 

Each Ranitomeya imitator has a unique arrangement of spots on its back (and belly), in the field we use these arrangements to identify individual frogs using the spotting almost like a 'fingerprint' system. This here is one of my study frogs, most likely a female. To identify the individual I would compare to an previous photo I took showing the dorsal pattern. I would pick a few different traits and quickly look and see if they were present or not, for example: the long stripe on the right side of the frog that looks as if 3 spots have flowed together, and then the 2 spots on the behind that look like a figure 8, I could look at more if needed but usually that's enough. Also if the spotting on the back was insufficient I could capture it and look at the belly spots, which are unique as well, I have not needed to do this to ID any individuals yet. The reason I am able to study particular frogs is that this species maintains territories containing a single pair of adults, so generally I have an idea of which frogs I might run into in a given area and I can just compare them versus their neighbors. I go back to the same sites day after day and relocate the same frogs in order to establish the boundaries of their territories.

 

UPDATE: When I went back to this territory today I saw this frog with its mate. I was mistaken about it being female, this one is actually the male.

Done