Strawberry Poison Dart Frogs have been called one of the most variable vertebrates on the planet. Having studied them for my M.S. in biology, I knew firsthand that their call patterns varied, a colleague discovered variations in their toxins and they're famed for their wide range of color patterns. The classic form, that I studied in Costa Rica, has a bright red body and blue legs, but Bocas del Toro in Panama is known to be the epicenter of color variation for the species, with each island having at least one unique color form. When I finally got a chance to visit Bocas del Toro last summer, I spent most of my waking hours crawling around the leaf litter on a quest to document as many different colors as I could. I saw many and it was very rewarding, but this shot was my trophy. Not only did this female have a beautiful color pattern, but she was carrying a tadpole on her back from her terrestrial nest to a bromeliad somewhere where she would feed it through metamorphosis.

Handheld Canon EOS 5D Mark lll with EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro Lens; f/6.3, 1/60sec, ISO 640