Blue Poison Dart Frog- Dendrobates azureus

For my Environmental Science class, my class was put into groups of three. My two other "group-mates", if you will, and I were assigned the Rain forest (we had to pick a specific place- we chose later the rain forests of Costa Rica). This is a topic that I am very passionate about and I hope it comes clear through my report. We have a group project and an individual project. Both topics are on the rain forest. The individual project I already handed in and the group project is due after we get back from Christmas vacation, around January 5.

The individual report is to be a 2 page paper (minimum), with bibliography included, photos and pictures on a separate page from the text but still presented. We had to choose an animal in our topic, the rain forest. So, I chose the Dendrobates azureus, or the blue poison frog. We had to write the paper in first person, events that occur in a year of its life, habitat requirements (biotic and abiotic factors), physical adaptations for survival in this biome, niche, what it eats, what eats it, its life cycle, threats for loss of habitat if any, diseases, potential uses for humans and if it is endangered or threatened and what people are doing to help.

This is the individual report on the blue poison dart frog.

Blue Poison Dart Frog

            My name is Raisin and I live in the rain forests of Costa Rica with my family of blue poison dart frogs, but we are also called dart-poison frogs, poison frogs or poison arrow frogs. We’re called poison dart frogs because South American Indians rub hunting arrows on some of us and put our poison on blow-gun darts. We are of the species Dendrobates azureus. We live in the moist, wet and shady areas in the ground. We are so brightly colored because of our method known as aposematic coloration, where we scare off any other animals that could harm us. We stay away from the species of Leimadophis epinephelus, because those snakes are vicious and our poison does not affect them. Our poison on the top of our skin is called pumiliotoxin and it is very toxic. My mother tells me that it can paralyze or kill many other animals, not just amphibians.

            My brother, my dad and I are about one and a half inches long, but our mother is bigger than all of us, at two inches. Since our father has great vision as we all do and the responsibility as a father, he goes to find us meat or bugs to feed on in order for us to survive. He usually brings spiders, caterpillars, beetles, flies, ants or termites back for us to eat! Our dad is very busy now since our mother laid more eggs near the moss-covered log where we rest. He needs to sit on the eggs to keep them warm until they hatch in fourteen to eighteen days. He then has to carry the tadpoles to a puddle in a leaf, but he has to make sure they each are in a different leaf because they could eat each other. The tadpoles have gills and can breathe under the water and they grow a tail so they can swim. Then our mother has to feed them and they will lose their tail and grow lungs so they can breathe out of the water too. Our new siblings will grow up in ten to twelve weeks and become just like us!

            Our bright coloration is the most obvious adaptation. My dad taught us all to be aggressive by chasing and wrestling with each other and he showed us how to cling to branches with our toes. Our size helps us so we don’t get eaten and my dad tells us that our poison is a highly adaptive trait and a great tool to help us survive in the wild. We have two hundred micrograms of poison in our bodies and it only takes about 2 micrograms to kill a human.

            Abiotic factors where we live would be water, soil, sunlight, climate, weather and precipitation. Biotic factors here would be producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers and decomposers. Producers are organisms that produce their own food through photosynthesis. Producers where we live are bamboo, banana trees, rubber trees, cassava, bromeliads, avocado, tropical fruit trees, vines, shrubs and ferns. Primary consumers eat plants and those near us are the colobus monkey, sloth, humming birds, bees, wasps and lemurs. Secondary consumers eat meat and those who live here are the anteater, spiders, scorpions, jaguar, snakes, some monkeys, tigers, vampire bats, Sumatran rhinoceros, acacia ant and loris. Decomposers break down dead animals and plants, while providing nutrients to the soil. Decomposers here are earthworms, fungi, termites, bacteria and protozoans.

            We are a type of threatened, or vulnerable, species because of habitat loss from fires and people cutting down our rain forests. We are also threatened because of the increasing number of us that are being captured and put in pet shops, as well as decreasing demand of us in pet shops. Fungal disease is threatening us as well, which is also called cutaneous chytridiomycosis. The same antifungal that humans use on athletes’ foot can be used on us. In some places, we are being treated great as they breed us as they study us. Since we breed easy when they take us for their pet shop, not many people take us anymore. My mother still tells us to watch out for really tall things that may be these humans. We can tell when the environment changes, so many humans study us.

            Humans use our poison to create very strong painkillers, such as epibatidine and ABT-594. Our poison can block pain from a human in the form of the painkillers as much as two hundred times more than morphine. Morphine has some bad side effects but ABT-594 does not affect respiration, diminish digestive movement, or show signs that a human would be addicted to it. I love how they use our poison to help them!