Female pumilio dart frogs settle in an area with bromeliad leaves and other water-filled leaves up in trees conducive to raising tadpoles. Males find a calling site in an area containing many females. The males call females and the females visit a number of males. Male pumilio dart frogs will fight other males to keep a good calling site and females will fight for good tadpole rearing areas.
Female strawberry poison dart frogs follow the male's call, which is a short, raspy chirp. After tactile stimulation the frogs face away from each other. The female lays up to five eggs on a leaf axil and the male fertilizes them. Males and females are not monogamous; they mate with several other partners during breeding season, with the female always approaching the male. They do not breed during dry periods; they mate only when it's moist.
The male pumilio dart frog keeps the eggs hydrated by urinating on them daily. Males rotate the eggs, remove fungus and defend them. If a male finds eggs that aren't his, he will eat them. When the eggs hatch after five to 15 days, the female allows the tadpoles to swim onto her back one at a time; then she takes them to a tadpole rearing site high in the trees that contain rainwater and food, placing one tadpole in each site. If tadpoles are placed together they will eat each other. As part of their competitive breeding nature, male strawberry poison dart frogs sometimes carry tadpoles fathered by a different frog up into a breeding area where their mothers won't find them, leaving them to starve.
Strawberry poison dart tadpoles eat insect larvae, fungi and algae that are in the stagnant water in the leaf. Female pumilio dart frogs feed their tadpoles unfertilized eggs every morning. The female will back up into the leaf and wait for the tadpole to stiffen its body and vibrate, then release the egg into the stagnant water. If the females don't provide eggs within three days the tadpoles will starve to death. Tadpoles become young frogs six to eight weeks after hatching.