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Oophaga lehmanni, Lehmann’s poison frog, is a small, boldly patterned dendrobatid frog endemic to western Colombia, known only from the Anchicayá River drainage in Valle del Cauca Department and one locality in Chocó Department, on the Pacific slopes of the Cordillera Occidental. The facts box above shows just how little room that leaves it: pressure from collection and habitat loss bears on a population confined to this one small area.
Identification
Adults reach a snout-vent length of 31-36 mm. The frog occurs in three colour morphs — red, orange and yellow — each set against a black or dark brown background, with two bright, broad bands of colour around the body and further coloured bands on the limbs. The skin is smooth, the first toe is shorter than the second, and males carry silver tips on their toes. It closely resembles the harlequin poison frog, Oophaga histrionicus, with which it can hybridise where their ranges meet. Wild animals carry skin alkaloids, chiefly pumiliotoxins, and notably lack the histrionicotoxins found in its close relative O. histrionicus, though captive-bred frogs lose this toxicity once raised on a different diet.
Habitat and range
The species is confined to an occupancy of less than 10 km² within submontane tropical rainforest at 600-1,200 m elevation, on the Pacific-facing slopes of Colombia’s Cordillera Occidental. It lives mainly on the forest floor among leaf litter but also climbs into low shrubs and trees, breeding and sheltering in water-filled microhabitats such as tree hollows and bromeliad rosettes. It is diurnal, and males attract females with a series of calls that differ noticeably between the northern and southern populations. Diet consists of small insects.
Behaviour and breeding
Breeding is concentrated at the end of the rainy season. The female deposits a small number of large eggs on leaves up to 120 cm above the forest floor, after which the male fertilises them and keeps them moist, rotating them occasionally over the next two to four weeks. Once they hatch, the male carries the tadpoles on his back to separate water-filled pools in tree hollows, bromeliads or bamboo stalks, and the female periodically returns to deposit unfertilised eggs as food for each tadpole; keeping tadpoles apart matters, since two sharing a pool may turn to cannibalism. Development from hatching to metamorphosis takes roughly two to three months.
Conservation
The IUCN category is shown in the facts box above. The species was once common within its tiny range but has become very rare, pressured by habitat degradation from timber extraction and illegal agriculture, and by collection for the pet trade. It is fully protected under Colombian law and listed on CITES Appendix II. A captive-breeding farm has been established in Colombia to supply the pet trade legally and to generate income for local communities, reducing the incentive to collect wild animals.
Similar species
Oophaga lehmanni is most easily confused with the harlequin poison frog, Oophaga histrionicus, which shares a similar build and overlaps with it at the edges of its range closely enough that the two can hybridise. The chemistry gives a further clue: O. lehmanni’s skin lacks the histrionicotoxins found in O. histrionicus, producing pumiliotoxins and other alkaloids instead.