
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.
Stumpffia davidattenboroughi. Photo credit G. M. Rosa The genus Stumpffia Boettger, 1881 was first described based on the species Stumpffia psologlossa a small frog from Nosy Be Island, Benavony, and Manongarivo on the adjacent mainland…
Hydrophis curtus The presence of the viviparous sea snakes in the Indian Ocean poses a unique question in this regard due to their evolutionary origins in Australasia (Australia and New Guinea). In a new…
The eye of all snakes is covered by a transparent spectacle that originates from the fusion of the eyelids during embryonic development. It is generally believed that the spectacle arose as an evolutionary adaptation to…
Pituophis catenifer sayi The genetic population structure of snakes can vary markedly based on a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Some snake species show only very modest levels of subdivision or none at…
Eastern Tiger Snake, Notechis scutatus Deadly snakes are among Australia’s most iconic animals. Now a new study led by The Australian National University (ANU) has helped explain how they descended from creatures that have…
Bar graph showing the species composition and relative abundance for 852 marine snakes collected as by-catch from otter trawlers operating on the trawling grounds at Sungai Buloh. The snakes were collected in 1971 and…
The Search for Lost Species initiative is today celebrating the incredible and unexpected rediscovery of the first of its top 25 “most wanted” lost species, the Jackson’s Climbing Salamander (Bolitoglossa jacksoni), lost to science…
Western Ratsnakes (Pantherophis obsoletus) Predicting the effects of global climate change on species interactions has remained difficult because regional climate models and the microclimates experienced by organisms are not always in sync. In a new paper…
The Desert Grasslands Whiptail, Aspidoscelis inornatus. In a new paper, Cole et al. (2017) describe the second known tetraploid amniote that reproduces by parthenogenetic cloning. This all-female species of whiptail lizard originated in the laboratory from…