Episodes

Tuesday Feb 17, 2026
241 Poison Frog Parents
Tuesday Feb 17, 2026
Tuesday Feb 17, 2026
Mimic poison frogs are utterly amazing, famous for mimicking multiple different frog species, and like other dart frogs they demonstrate bi-parental care where both male and female frogs team up to look after the young. What we didn't know was how flexible these parental roles are - can females step in to move tadpoles when males start slacking, and what triggers them to do so? It turns out they can, but they don't always.
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Main Paper References:
Moss JB, Winter BM, Westrick SE, Julkowski K, Podraza ME, Fischer EK. 2026. Partner cues and individual variation underlie sex-reversed parental care in poison frogs. Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 293:20252200. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2025.2200.
Other Mentioned Papers/Studies:
Moss JB, Tumulty JP, Fischer EK. 2023 Evolution of acoustic signals associated with cooperative parental behavior in a poison frog. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 120, e2218956120. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2218956120
Other Links/Mentions:
Buy Pyro by Dallin Kohler: https://www.torreyhouse.org/pyro
Kohler, Dallin. 2025. Pyro: The Quest for a Beautifully Elusive Snake. 979-8-89092-022-5
Editing and Music:
Intro/outro – Treehouse by Ed Nelson
Species Bi-week theme – Michael Timothy
Other Music – The Passion HiFi, https://www.thepassionhifi.com


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