FROGS OF COLOMBIA — COCHRAN AND GOIN 463 



Color in alcohol. — The type has faded to nearly cream-buff, but some 

 faint sepia lines still emphasize the dorsolateral fold from behind the 

 eye to the level of the groin, while on the posterior femur a row of 

 light spots surrounded by sepia outlines may still be seen. It appears 

 to have had a paler middorsal stripe. The venter is pale olive-buff. 



Remarks. — In a series consisting of five frogs from Costa Rica, 

 seven from Panama, and the type from Turbo in Antioquia, the critical 

 measurements overlap with those of Colombian L. poecilochilus dipty- 

 chus except for hand length. Nominate L. poecilochilus has a slightly 

 shorter hand proportionately than does L. p. diptychus (twice standard 

 error for L. p. poecilochilus extends from 22.1 to 23.5 percent of the 

 head-body length, and for L. p. diptychus from 23.6 to 25 percent, 

 with a gap of only 0.1 percent). The examination of a larger series of 

 both forms is necessary before giving weight to the hand length as a 

 character for separating these two forms. 



While nominate poecilochilus and L. p. diptychus are undoubtedly 

 very closely related, minute average differences tend to keep them 

 separate. The slightly wider and sharper postfemoral light line of the 

 former is seldom duplicated in the latter, in which a series of light spots 

 sometimes is the only remaining evidence of such a marking. The dark 

 canthal stripe apparently reaches the anterior margin of the eye in 

 most specimens of poecilochilus but is sometimes interrupted in L. p. 

 diptychus. The distinct spotting of upper lip and back seems to be 

 partly a matter of the preservation and age of the specimen, as in 25 

 freshly collected examples of L. p. diptychus from Rio Manso, C6rdoba, 

 the back is spotted in 70 percent and the upper lip in 50 percent, the 

 spots equaling in intensity those of the best-preserved specimens of L. 

 poecilochilus from Panama. Unfortunately, the type of L. poecilochilus 

 is now completely faded, although the original description mentions 

 the "brown band on the extremity of each canthus rostralis reaching 

 the labial commissure; another beneath the anterior part of the orbit. 

 Lips marbled with white and brownish"; and, further on, in comparing 

 this species with fuscus, Cope speaks of its "want of spots on the back," 

 as he had just stated that the color of the superior surface of L. 

 poecilochilus was chestnut brown. Rivero (1961, p. 43) believes that 

 poecilochilus is more spotted on the dorsum than L. p. diptychus, 

 in spite of Cope's statement about the type. Much more comparison 

 of fresh specimens from lower Central America and northern 

 South America is needed before the true status of either form can be 

 established. 



Specimens Examined 

 COLOMBIA 



Antioquia: Near Turbo, USNM 4347a (type); Medellfn, AMNH 38829. 

 BRAZIL: Para to Manaos, USNM 28930. 



