Heavenly Poison Dart Frog (Ranitomeya aetherea) Photo by By Alexander T. Mônico in E. D. Koch, A. T. Mônico, J. S. Dayrell, A. S. Ferreira, S. P. Dantas, J. Moravec & A. P. Lima – “A remarkable new blue Ranitomeya species (Anura: Dendrobatidae) with copper metallic legs from open forests of Juruá River Basin, Amazonia”, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=165970189

Dear Readers, I am up to my hair follicles in biology revision at the moment – one more fact about non-coding RNA and I fear my head might explode like something out of a David Cronenberg film. But fortunately there are only ten more days until The Big Day, and then after that the summer lies before me, full of holidays and theatre and a trip to the ballet, and other delights (including getting my kitchen cabinets painted). But in the meantime, my blog posts are likely to be short and sweet, though I do enjoy the chance to surface and write about something a bit less demanding than calcium-signalling. Don’t ask.

So, here is the Heavenly Poison Dart Frog. What a little darling it is! It’s only about the size of a thumbnail, and it lives in the forests of the Juruá River Basin in Brazil. Little is known about its habits, but it’s thought that, like other members of the family, it may lay a single egg in a rain-filled pocket on one of these plants, Phenakospermum guyannense.

Phenakospermum guyannense (Photo by By (c) Tony Rebelo, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA) – https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/31072639, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=144374167)

In other members of the family, the mother frog returns once the tadpole has hatched and deposits a second, unfertilised egg for it to eat. Amphibians truly are amazing animals.

The scientist who named the frog (Esteban Koch of the National Institute of Amazonian Research) first found it in 2023. By the time he returned in 2024 (a journey that involved an eight hour boat ride after an initial trip by plane), there were signs of deforestation. Scientists have no idea how large the population is, but clearly chopping down the plants that the frog depends on is not going to be a good thing. Sigh. Fingers crossed that at least some of the Amazon (and the surrounding wetlands and pampas of the Pantanal) survives.