
Amphibians, Reptiles, & Natural History

Naturalist, Photographer , Zoologist
After retiring from a career teaching biology and anatomy & physiology and science administration, I study reptiles and amphibians (but focus mostly on squamates). My current interest are in snake phylogeny and diversity, highly aquatic snakes (that are non-sea snakes), the herpetofauna of Trinidad and Tobago, and giant snakes. I have been on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Herpetological Society, the Board of Directors of the Tucson Herpetological Society; a research associate at the Field Museum in Chicago. I have been a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Snake Specialists Group International Society for the History and Bibliography of Herpetology (ISHBH); and on the board of directors of Friends of Madera Canyon.

In 2020 I was visiting friends in southern Florida. They picked me up at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, and within a few minutes, we were headed south. Looking out the car window, I…

A home-owner encountering a rattlesnake in their yard, garage, or house can be un-nerving. As people build more houses in the Sonoran Desert, this kind of encounter becomes more frequent. In a recent paper,…

A Fox News story in 2015, stated authorities in Puerto Rico caught a 3.6-meter, 70 pound Burmese Python in a river in the northern coastal town of Manati. Puerto Rico also has an introduced…

The Florida Everglades supports a variety of native animals but over the years the pet trade and keepers of exotic animals have introduced a variety of invasive species including birds, mammals, fish and reptiles. The invasive…

In the photo above…an adult male (left) and female (right) of Lygodactylus williamsi on a leaf of Pandanus rabaiensis in Kimboza Forest Reserve. Photos by John Lyakurwa. The Electric Blue Gecko, Lygodactylus williamsi, is a small, diurnal,…

Diaz et al. (2022) describe a new species of this subgroup from western Cuba based on genetic and morphological differences from other species.

African water snakes of the genus Lycodonomorphus (Family Lamprophiidae) are widespread, abundant and presumably an important component of many aquatic and semiaquatic food webs. These snakes are poorly understood taxonomically, particularly from a phylogenetic…

The holotype of Echinosaura fischerorum sp. nov. (male, DHMECN 15208) in dorsal (upper left), ventral (upper right), and lateral (bottom) views. Scale bars = 10 mm. Photographs by MYM.

Dipsas catesbyi has been recorded making a vocalization. It is not a hiss. Do some snakes communicate with sound?