I am the European Studbook Foundations co-ordinator for all Mantella species, and am inviting anyone who works with mantellas to join the studbook.  For those who are unsure what a studbook is, it gives an opportunity to co-ordinate breeding and animal movements in captive popualtions to try and increase the purity of the bloodlines.

With the ESF studbook you would keep 100% control and possession of your animals but it will be a great way to source new animals or find people who are after new specimens either for sale or swap to improve their gene pool.  All I ask in return is that I am kept up to date once per year as to the status of your frogs, any breeding, deaths, new acquisitions etc.

If you would like any further information please have a look at the ESF website @ www.studbooks.org where there are also forms for joining the studbook.  Also if you have any questions regarding this topic please feel free to contact me!

I am very keen to get this project going in the right direction, and with the English addition to this forum I hope that I can get this message across to the Dutch community of keepers!  Hopefully this section of the forum will grow because else where it looks like a very busy, informative forum!

I'm not a Mantella keeper, but would like to say I really like the initiative. Keep up the good work!

Markus also wrote an article about this studbook for our magazine, hopefully published this september or december.

Hi Peter, thanks for mentioning it, I wasn't sure if I was allowed to say before it got released I really look forward to seeing it get published in the near future.

The ESF runs a number of studbooks Remco and they are all reptiles and amphibian related, their work is worth looking at, however as far as I am aware there are not any more studbooks for any other dart frogs. When the mantella ones start to settle down and get going I will be loking to start a few more... got to keep busy!