Sam Eliades is a PhD student who joined the Siler Lab in Summer 2017. He is primarily interested in reptile and amphibian phylogenetics, biogeography, and conservation. Growing up in New Jersey, Sam spent a great deal of his childhood watching nature documentaries and looking for whatever wildlife he could find in his neighborhood. He quickly developed a fascination with reptiles and amphibians that ultimately led him to study Zoology at North Carolina State University.

As an undergraduate at NC State, Sam spent time as a husbandry intern at the North Carolina Aquarium, a research intern at the North Carolina Zoo, and a Herpetology Unit Technician at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Working under Dr. Bryan Stuart at the North Carolina Museum, Sam completed independent research projects on the systematics of Cyrtodactylus, Gekko, and Hemiphyllodactylus in Laos. He also had the opportunity to work as a guest researcher at the Australian Museum in Sydney, Australia examining the collection of Lao specimens there. These projects helped generate Sam’s interest in the reptiles and amphibians of Southeast Asia. For his dissertation, Sam is planning on studying reptile and amphibian diversity in Malaysian Borneo and specifically wants to look at how palm oil plantations impact these groups.