Endangered
Golden poison frog
Phyllobates terribilis
The golden poison frog, also known as the golden dart frog or golden poison arrow frog, is a poison dart frog endemic from the rainforests of Colombia.
Appearance
The adults are brightly colored, while juvenile frogs have mostly black bodies with two golden-yellow stripes along their backs. The black fades as they mature, and at around 18 weeks of age the frog is fully colored. The frog's color pattern is aposematic (a coloration to warn predators of its toxicity).
The golden poison frog is the largest species of the poison dart frog family, and can reach a weight of nearly 30 grams with a length of 6 cm as adults.
Range and habitat
The golden poison frog is endemic to humid forests of the Pacific coast of Colombia in the Cauca and Valle del Cauca Departments in the Chocó Rainforest. The optimal this species usually lives in the rainforest with high rain rates (5 m or more per year), altitudes from sea level to 200 m elevation, temperatures of at least 26 °C, and relative humidity of 80–90%. Its range is less than 5,000 square km. Destruction of this habitat has contributed to P. Terribilis becoming an endangered species.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The frog is normally diurnal. Golden poison frogs live evenly spaced without forming larger congregations. This species is an unspecialized ambush hunter. An adult frog can eat food items much larger in relation to its size than most other dendrobatids.
Tadpoles feed on algae, mosquito larvae, and other edible material that may be present in their environment. Golden poison frogs are notable for demonstrating tactile courtship during reproduction, each partner stroking its mate's head, back, flanks, and cloacal areas prior to egg deposition.
In crisis
The golden poison frog has become endangered due to habitat destruction within its naturally limited range.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Golden poison frog is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Golden poison frog, Wikidata item Q963997. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
