Notes on the herpetofauna of Surinam : III. A new species of Dendrobates (Amphibia salientia, Dendrobatidae) from Surinam

INTRODUCTION During a recent collecting trip, financed by grant W 956-2 from WOTRO (Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research), I spent 47 days (22 August-7 October 1968) on the Sipaliwini savannah in southern Surinam. The Sipaliwini savannah is part of an extensive savannah that covers the watershed between the Sipaliwini River in Surinam and the Paroe River in Brazil. Though the watershed is very low, the waters of Sipaliwini and Paroe Rivers never seem to make contact, as is the case with other rivers on the Rupununi savannah and in southern French Guiana. About one tenth of this savannah is situated in Surinam, the remainder in Brazil (see inset fig. 3). G. Mann (in Fittkau et al., 1968) calls this a tropical wet savannah and describes the ecology of this habitat extensively. The soil of the Sipaliwini savannah is classified by Beek & Bramao (in Fittkau et al., 1968: 92) as belonging to Soil Region Β 1-Guiana Uplands, and is composed of Latosols and Red-Yellow Podzolic soils. This difference in soil composition with the coastal savannahs (with a sandy soil) is evident in the vegetation, while also there are differences in physiography. In the coastal savannahs the ground is covered with a sparse cover of grasses, but there are also many shrubs, up to two metres in height. The Sipaliwini savannah is nearly completely covered with grasses, only in the wet valleys Mauritia palms and on the hills a few widely spaced, low, crooked trees, never forming a closed canopy, are present. Shrubs are absent. In some places extensive bare rockslates are exposed and the top and slopes of quite a few hills are covered with large rocks. In contrast with the flat coastal savannahs the Sipaliwini savannah is very hilly, the highest point on Surinam