Standardization and repeatability is at the heart of all scientific research, yet very little literature exists to standardize mor- phometric measurements within vertebrate groups. This is particularly true for amphibians. Our study attempts to rectify this lack of methodological standardization for the measurement of morphological characters in anurans through an ex- tensive literature survey of 136 species descriptions representing 45 currently recognized...

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Despite the exceptionally high levels of vertebrate diversity in Southeast Asia, surprisingly little is known about the processes responsible for this occurrence. Recently, an increase in diversity of amphibians has been studied in the Philippines. One genus in particular, Sanguirana, a frog genus endemic to the Philippines, consists of seven species with distinct physical characteristics as well as one or two species...

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Science in Action and Object ID Day is an annual event sponsored by the Sam Noble Museum.  One Sunday a year, the museum is FREE to the public and all museum departments/collections, plus a wide variety of other OU or Oklahoma-based science entities have booths to educate people on their research or other items of importance. This year the Herpetology Department featured...

This is the second in a series featuring the recent OU graduates who are members of the Siler Lab.  In their own words, they will highlight the experiences they had with us as students, volunteers and/or employees.  The first entry, by Rachel Flanagan, is available here and the third in the series, by Matt De Ruyter is available here. In January 2015, I began volunteering in...

This is the first in a series featuring the recent OU graduates who are members of the Siler Lab.  In their own words, they will highlight the experiences they had with us as students, volunteers and/or employees. The second featurette is available here. I started volunteering in the herpetology department at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History during my junior year at...

The Siler Lab is attending the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (SSAR) annual meeting in Lawrence, KS on July 30-Aug. 2, 2015.  See below for titles and abstracts: Preliminary screening of natural history collections for historical presence of amphibian infection disease in Oklahoma by Rachel L. Flanagan, Jessa L. Watters, Cameron D. Siler Amphibian populations are declining all over...

We present a near comprehensive, densely sampled, multilocus phylogenetic estimate of species relationships within the anuran family Ceratobatrachidae, a morphologically and ecologically diverse group of frogs from the island archi- pelagos of Southeast Asia and the South-West Pacific. Ceratobatrachid frogs consist of three clades: a small clade of enigmatic, primarily high-elevation, semi-aquatic Sundaland species currently assigned to Ingerana (for which we erect...

Kai Wang, recent graduate of Washington State University, will be joining the Siler Lab in July 2015 as a Master’s Student.  Prior to his arrival here in Oklahoma, Kai spent time in the field in China and Tibet. Kai was in western Yunnan Province (specifically Tenchong and Husa) in China, from April 15-25 doing an independent research study on a species of Tylotriton newt....

Field work by the Siler Lab and sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation continued in April 2015, with visits to the following sites (see photos here).  A summary of the animals collected at each site are visible below (Table 1). April 10-12: McGee Creek WMA, Stringtown WMA, Hugo WMA (Jessa Watters, Elyse Freitas, Rachel Flanagan, Dylan Lindauer, Matt DeRuyter) April 17-19: Cookson Hills WMA and vicinity of...