Dendrobates imitator

John Skillcorn
Last update: 17 August, 2002

The frog is very small, less than an inch in overall length.  It is primarily black but has a fine, metallic-green tracery over the dorsal region, with blue marbling on the hind legs.  However, this colouring and patterning seems to be very variable, rather like the variability in D. pumilio though, it must be said, nowhere near as much as in that species.  The identifying characteristic (or so I am lead to believe) is the double black blotch on the snout.  (Have a look at the photos on INIBICO's website).  A very similar frog, D. variabilis, is virtually identical to D. imitator, except that it has a single black spot on the nose (see below).  I have heard that it does, however, have a different number of toes on the feet, which would seem to be a further distinguishing feature.  I have not had the opportunity to test this for myself, though.

This view of D. imitator gives a good idea of the metallic green colouring of 
the dorsal region.
Photo J. Skillcorn

If one looks closely at the snout of this animal, it is just possible to see the 
double-blotch of black which is one of the distinguishing characteristics 
of this species, setting it apart from D. variabilis below.
Photo J. Skillcorn

In habit they are extremely arboreal, never willingly coming down to the 'ground'.  As a result, they are to be observed perched on plant leaves, leaping from leaf to leaf in a very dainty way.  They are good feeders, and spend a lot of time hunting food amongst the plants.  Being so small, they naturally require food of a suitable size.  Springtails, Drosophila and hatchling crickets serve them well, as would most other tiny insects.  They will also take white worms so long as these are placed on leaves within easy reach.  Food supplements are, of course, most important if one is to breed these animals and keep them in good condition.

These two photographs of D. variabilis above were taken by Jun Matsuzono of
http://www.wildsky.net/ a Website well worth a visit.
They clearly show the single spot on the nose of the animal, and 
there is also a difference in colouring, D. variabilis having slightly broader
banding on the dorsum.

Their vivarium was very thickly planted, with actively growing climbing plants such as Scindapsus and Tradescantia.  The floor was inert gravel and there was a waterfall arranged in one corner to keep up the humidity and to circulate the air.  A third of the top of the vivarium was covered in nylon mesh and the front consisted of double sliding glass doors.  I think the whole thing was around a meter long and half a meter high.  Heating was with Ultratherm heating mat connected to an electronic thermostat.  The mat was placed underneath the vivarium where it heated the water circulating in the waterfall arrangement.

The male actively called, was repetitive and loud for the size of frog.  
You can hear the call at this Webpage: www.herpetofauna.hpg.com.br/Pages/dendrobatesimitator.htm

I never found more than two eggs per clutch.  They were invariably stuck to the side of the vivarium and so it was decided not to try to remove them for artificial incubation.  

Photographs of the eggs may be seen here: www.wildsky.net/seicho/yamagishiimitatoregg.htm

However, out of the many clutches produced only a few proved fertile.  One egg did, however, develop into a young, healthy frog, so I had to be content with that.  This one tadpole gave me a bit of a problem at the start, however.

I noticed the male carrying the tadpole around on his back, and so I caught him up, placed him in a small plastic box containing a little water and expected the tadpole to swim off in due course.  Nothing of the sort happened, and for hours the tadpole remained fixed securely to its parent's back.  Plan two was to release the parent into its vivarium after having installed a bromeliad with water in its central vase.  This did the trick, and within ten minutes the frog made a bee-line to the plant, sat in the centre and within seconds the tadpole was free.

From then on it was a fairly simple matter to rear the tadpole.  It was fed on TetraMin flake and had its water changed twice a day.  It was kept in around 100 ml of soft water and grew steadily.  The legs appeared with no sign of the dreaded spindle leg, and the young frog - although tiny - fed actively on springtails.  It was soon feeding on Drosophila and hatchling crickets, and from that moment on it was maintained exactly as were its parents.

For those people who have an interest in the smaller species of frogs, and who have access to specimens, then this frog is well worth the effort.  Although not prolific breeders (not in my experience, anyway) they are not impossible and will reward anyone who is willing to try to give them the arboreal conditions they need.

Some further notes on keeping D. imitator

Justin Yeager
Last update: 27 September 2006

I've bred D. imitator for years now, and with several of my females over this time I would get clutches of four eggs on about the same time period as you mentioned (on the Website.)

My tanks were planted much more heavily, and I didn't keep many bromeliads in my breeding tanks. I liked to get many larger leaved plants that would overlap their leaves. Anywhere there were overlapped leaves I could expect to find eggs. In fact, I would deliberately overlap leaves so that the frogs would lay there.

D. imitator is definitely a very easy frog to reproduce and to care for. To illustrate this, I have two comical stories about their parental care, and general ease of raising.

One tank, about 50 gallons, I would mist very heavily (this was the breeding tank). Eventually, due to the build-up of the water used in misting, the water level would overflow, and the soil would become very wet. In fact, there were some small puddles in the back corners of the tank. Eventually I wanted to stop their breeding (easier said than done) because I found that the eggs had less and less jelly around them. I took this to be a sign that they needed to take a break and rest. I took advantage of this time to re-landscape their tank.

This involved scooping out the dirt base, but in doing so I kept finding tadpoles in various stages of development in the soggy dirt. By the time the job was completed, I had about six mostly formed tadpoles. I sincerely doubt that they were fed unfertilized eggs, so they must have just eaten Drosophila or - who knows what?

The other incident that comes to mind was when I was planning a new tank, and I wanted to take a Neoregelia splendens from one tank and put it into another. I usually don't do this, and I always preach against it but, from time to time, you break your own rules! Well, I cleaned it out and wiped the leaves dry. After planting it in the tank (which contained two pairs of D. tinctorius FG) I sprayed it heavily and the vase filled back up.

About a month later I swore I saw a tiny froglet in the tank. It was way too small to be a D. tinctorius, and so I dug around. To my surprise, I found a baby D. imitator. It was a little smaller than the ones that I rear myself, but he was in great health. There were very few flies in the bromeliad, but this little guy must have been deep in the bromeliad vase, and morphed out just eating whatever algae or flies were in there.

It took me a week or so to discover how a D. imitator (none of their tanks were remotely close to the tinctorius tanks) had gotten inside their tank. After I caught him, I kept him for several years as my miracle baby!

On clutch size
A female of mine laid clutches of four. She was older (about four or so) when she began laying the larger clutches. I've only found one other person who had those size clutches, and his female also killed several of the males she mated with. She was a beast.

Natural versus artificial rearing
About the froglets they raise. They always are smaller in my experience, but they are very hardy. They also seem to grow a little slower, but that again may just be because of how large the ones I rear end up. Sometimes it's hard to tell one that's two weeks old from an adult. Is the D. imitator you have the ones that we sometimes call the Panguana lamasi? (Yes, it is from Panguana.)  We don't have many of those in the US, but I hear they're pretty nice.  I like the imitator group much more than DD. ventrimaculatus, fantasticus, and variabilis.

How are the IGF shows? We just had our big show in the US, IAD (International Amphibian Day), and we had a blast. That's where I got those solid orange galactonotus. There were some cool Pope Island green D. pumilio (CB) I wanted to get also, but I'll wait a bit before I buy them. 

Justin Yeager.