50 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 2 88 



set off by a white area below; posterior femur with a less-defined light 

 stripe; several dark diagonal crossbars on upper surfaces of femur, 

 tibia, and foot; a sharp dark line along posterior surface of arm, with 

 dark irregular spots on upper arm surface; lip white, sharply outlining 

 the dark stripe above it; venter white, immaculate (in this example) 

 except for a few small spots across the throat, on lower posterior 

 femur, below knee, and on foot. Soles of feet and palms of hands pale 

 sepia, the disks darker below. 



Remarks. — The skin on back and belly may be strongly or weakly 

 granular, but some specimens are entirely smooth below. The toes 

 may be faintly webbed at the base, or the webbing may be rather 

 conspicuous, extending about one eighth the length of the free part 

 of the fourth toe. The heel reaches to the center or the posterior corner 

 of the e} 7 e in most examples at hand and to the anterior corner of 

 the eye in several; it reaches to the nostril in one specimen. 



The skin tears rather easily, although not as easily as that of 

 Phyllobates palmatus. While P. brunneus and P. palmatus are near 

 each other in the key, they are readily separated by the much greater 

 webbing of the toes in palmatus and the relatively shorter femur and 

 hand in brunneus. Also, the full-grown brunneus does not appear to 

 exceed 22.5 millimeters and palmatus grows to a length of 36.5 milli- 

 meters. 



Dunn (1957) likened brunneus to talamancae, a Costa Kican species 

 which, he stated, has appeared in Colombia at Popayan, in Cauca, 

 and at El Centro, in Santander. He noted that "in both frogs the 

 white dorso-lateral stripe is entirely above the dark lateral band, 

 and runs from the eye to the sacrum." The present authors have not 

 found any specimens of talamancae in Colombia so far; hence, that 

 species is not included in this study. 



Because of the traces of webs between the toes and of many other 

 similarities, it seems reasonable to call the very prolific and wide- 

 ranging little frog found from Panama to Narino, Colombia, by the 

 name of brunneus (Cope) instead of latinasus Cope, the original 

 description of which states distinctly that the toes are free. Further- 

 more, the size of the type of latinasus was given as three centimeters 

 (30 mm.), while the maximum size among the 206 examples that 

 were measured for the present study and that here are called brunneus 

 is 28.5 millimeters. Although this difference is not great, it is of some 

 significance when considered along with other facts regarding latinasus. 

 The type of latinasus has been missing since Cope's time, and fresh 

 topotypic material that might be considered as representing this 

 species is scarce. 



Considerable variation is noted in the ventral coloring of brunneus 

 as here understood. Sometimes the entire throat, chest, and belly 



