Nominal morph
This morph is known from the highlands of the eastern Andean foothills from southern Ecuador to central Peru. This is the name-bearing morph for the species, originally described from the highlands near Tarapoto, Peru. These frogs can be commonly found inhabiting bromeliads in primary and late-secondary montane forest.
Although at first glance this morph looks like the nominal variabilis, it is worth mentioning as a distinct morph. First, the dorsum typically lacks the blues found in the nominal variabilis. The legs also tend to be solid blue and with very large black spots. The southern morph is also larger than the nominal morph. Strangely, the evolution of spots in high elevations has occurred more that once in the variabilis group; both in Peru and in Ecuador. The third and fourth pictures show a comparison between the nominal and southern morph. The southern morph is pictured on the bottom and top, respectively.
Lowland morph
This morph was long known as Ranitomeya ventrimaculata. Brown & Twomey et al. (2011) demonstrated that the epithet ventrimaculata was being used incorrectly, and as a result these frogs were placed in synonymy with R. variabilis. This morph is frequently found in bromeliads, being commonly found in understory bromeliads of the genus Guzmania. Dry conditions which favor only canopy bromeliads, or excessively wet conditions which result in temporary flooding, appear to have caused certain population of this morph to be highly arboreal. This morph can be found throughout the lowlands of the upper Amazon and may co-occur with R. amazonica near Iquitos, Peru.
