Oophaga is a genus of poison-dart frogs containing twelve species, many of which were formerly placed in the genus Dendrobates. The frogs are distributed in Central and South America, from Nicaragua south through the El Chocó to northern Ecuador (at elevations below ). Their habitats vary with some species being arboreal while other being terrestrial, but the common feature is that their tadpoles are obligate egg feeders. Most species in this genus are seriously threatened and O. speciosa is already extinct.
Etymology Oophaga, from Ancient Greek ᾠόν (ōión), meaning "egg", and φάγος (phágos), meaning "eater", is descriptive of the tadpoles' diet.Heselhaus, R. 1992. Poison-arrow frogs: their natural history and care in captivity. Blandford, London.Zimmermann, E. and Zimmermann, H. 1994. Reproductive strategies, breeding, and conservation of tropical frogs: dart-poison frogs and Malagasy poison frogs. In: J.B. Murphy, K. Adler and J.T. Collins (eds), Captive management and conservation of amphibians and reptiles, pp. 255-266. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, Ithaca (New York). Contributions to Herpetology, Volume 11.
Reproduction While presumably all dendrobatids show parental care, this is unusually advanced in Oophaga: the tadpoles feed exclusively on trophic (unfertilized) eggs supplied as food by the mother; the father is not involved. Through the eggs, the mother also passes defensive toxins to the tadpoles: Oophaga pumilio tadpoles experimentally fed with eggs from alkaloid-free frogs did not contain alkaloids.
Species There are twelve species in this genus:
11 are extant, one is recently extinct.
Image Scientific name Common name DistributionOophaga anchicayensis (Posso-Terranova and Andrés, 2018)Chocó region of northwestern ColombiaOophaga andresi (Posso-Terranova and Andrés, 2018) CocorroColumbia Oophaga arborea (Myers, Daly, and Martínez, 1984) Polkadot poison frog Panama Oophaga granulifera (Taylor, 1958) Granular poison frog Costa Rica and Panama Oophaga histrionica (Berthold, 1845) Harlequin poison frog El Chocó region of western Colombia Oophaga lehmanni (Myers and Daly, 1976) Lehmann's poison frog western Colombia Oophaga occultator (Myers and Daly, 1976) La Brea poison frog Cordillera Occidental in the Cauca Department of Colombia Oophaga pumilio (Schmidt, 1857) Strawberry poison-dart frog eastern central Nicaragua through Costa Rica and northwestern PanamaOophaga solanensis (Posso-Terranova and Andrés, 2018)Koe-koeNorthwestern region of Colombia, on the western banks of the Atrato and san Juan rivers Oophaga speciosa (Schmidt, 1857) Splendid poison frog Cordillera de Talamanca, western Panama (extinct) Oophaga sylvatica (Funkhouser, 1956) Diablito poison frog southwestern Colombia and northwestern Ecuador. Oophaga vicentei (Jungfer, Weygoldt, and Juraske, 1996) Vicente's poison frog Veraguas, Bocas del Toro, Colón and Coclé Provinces of central Panama
Captivity Oophaga may be kept as pets by experienced amphibian keepers, but they are challenging to breed in captivity as only parents can feed and care for tadpoles.
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