A molecular phylogeny based on a fragment of the mitochondrial 16 S rRNA gene and morphological comparisons suggests that only one polymorphic species of large Dendrobates, commonly assigned to D. tinctorius, occurs on the eastern Guiana Shield and its vicinities. The oldest available name for this taxon is D. tinctorius (Schneider, 1799). We place D. azureus Hoogmoed, 1969 as its junior synonym. Data for D. machadoi Bokermann, 1958 are not available, but we suspect that this name has to be treated in the same way. Dendrobates tinctorius exhibits numerous variants differing in color and pattern.