Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Its a D. galactonotus but I've never seen one like it. Is it a type of morph? The message board I got the pic from is in a different language.

Looks a little like Sean Stewart’s ‘Koi’ morph. If the site you got it from is in German, post a link and I’ll try to read it.

http://www.dendrobatidae.org

I don't think its in German, otherwise I could "sort of" read it. My guess is Dutch. Anyway its a really cool morph. It reminds me of a calico retic or a paradox cornsnake. Someone gimmie one!

prob a fungal infection of the skin.

No, I don't think this is a fungal infection, (for several reasons, other than the odd color patterns on the skin,) but unfortunately, Shawn Stewart's photos of it are in black and white--Which is weird. Why would anyone take a photo of a dart frog in black and white? The origin is listed as Brazil, and from what I've found so far, no one is offering them to the hobby yet, or working with them. I'll ask around and see if I get a response.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

D. auratus blue, auratus Ancon Hill, galactonotus orange, galactonotus yellow, fantasticus, reticulatus, imitator, castaneoticus, azureus, pumilio Bastimentos. P. lugubris, vittatus, terribilis mint green, terribilis orange.

I've virtually been around the world on the search for the origin of this, including some opinions that it is a P. terribilis morph, not galactonotus, with the exact same photo you posted (in German.) Sean Stewart does have a site I found with a color photo, which was similar, but more orange than this one, and someone by the name of Darren Meyer is breeding the orange looking ones, but I could get no further into the site-- only got a lot of stuff about news from the Netherlands.

All in all, I could find nothing about it being a new wild discovery, then further bred from the wild. So far, it seems to be a product of captive breeding, perhaps from a mutation that occurred in captivity.

Someone here suggested it was a frog with a fungus infection on the skin. While I think this possibility is still there, I think the single photo of this particular frog shows it is much too lively looking, and I can see no lesions. The somewhat more orange versions of it were groups of obviously healthy froglets. We'll get it figured out eventually.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

D. auratus blue, auratus Ancon Hill, galactonotus orange, galactonotus yellow, fantasticus, reticulatus, imitator, castaneoticus, azureus, pumilio Bastimentos. P. lugubris, vittatus, terribilis mint green, terribilis orange.

Well, I finally got us an answer from the horse's mouth--Sean Stewart, who was kind enough to write back to me about this morph:

"The splashed back dart frog was named galactonotus or 'milk-back' for good reason. Some of these orange galacts when they metamorphose have a white back. That white back fades into orange and yellow spots as they age. A small percentage of adults retain this white juvenile color with its adult orange and they look like a koi fish. I coined the name "Koi" to describe a line of orange galacts that I was working with in the late 1990's. This line I bought from a small collector in Holland. I bred them and sold a bunch years ago. It probably represents a distinct location of orange galacts in Brazil somewhere." In other research I did, it was suggested that they were from Goias, Maranhao or Para, which I may already have mentioned.

So they are not an abnormal mutation, nor a fungus, but a genetic anomaly in a population of splash-back orange galactonotus, which as Sean points out, the species was actually named after.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

D. auratus blue, auratus Ancon Hill, galactonotus orange, galactonotus yellow, fantasticus, reticulatus, imitator, castaneoticus, azureus, pumilio Bastimentos. P. lugubris, vittatus, terribilis mint green, terribilis orange.