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...

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...

We have been extremely busy in SE Oklahoma this Spring!  So busy that we have fallen behind on updating our field blogs 🙂 Below are some highlights from the most recent trips.  We hope to get more info out to you all soon. April 10-12: McGee Creek WMA, Stringtown WMA (Jessa Watters, Elyse Freitas, Rachel Flanagan, Dylan Lindauer, Matt DeRuyter) April 24-26: Robbers Cave WMA,...

Siler Lab members (Jessa Watters, Nick Huron and Rachel Flanagan) were joined in the field in April 2015 by local  journalist Dan Bewley, creator of the blog Science is OK, through which he shares insights into scientific research occurring around Oklahoma.  While it was a little odd to be doing field work with a microphone stuck down the front of our waders...

The Siler Lab was in the field again last weekend and we saw/heard a fantastic frog chorus at a pond on the James Collins WMA in Latimer County, Oklahoma....

Two of the Siler Lab members who received internal research grants presented their findings at OU’s annual Undergraduate Research Day on April 18, 2015.  Tucker Walton gave an oral presentation entitled “Delineating morphometric characters for use in snake species descriptions” with the help of Matt DeRuyter, Jessa Watters, and Cameron Siler.  Matt DeRuyter presented a poster entitled “Preliminary Phylogenetic Study of the Lizard Genus...

The Siler Lab has completed two trips to Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) in SE Oklahoma in March, 2015; one with only 4 members of the Siler Lab and the second with members of Dr. Siler’s OU Herpetology course.  Check out the summary statistics below (Table 1) and the amazing compilation video created by a student in the Herpetology course.  The Siler Lab continues...

The website for the Sam Noble Museum of Oklahoma Natural History has had a make-over!  Every collection now has online access to databases, history, archives, loan policies, etc.  Please take the time to explore the new Herpetology Department page. Contact Jessa Watters with any questions: jwatters@ou.edu or 405-325-7771....

This past weekend, several members from the Herpetology Department went to SE Oklahoma. This was the first time a few of us had ever gone “herping.” On our first night out, we heard many Spring Peepers, Leopard frogs (Lithobates sphenocephalus), and Crawfish Frogs (Lithobates areolatus). Throughout the weekend, we caught numerous Bullfrog tadpoles (Lithobates catesbeianus), a Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer), a Brown Snake...

This week, we hear from Dr. Janalee P. Caldwell, Professor and Curator Emeritus I was Curator of Amphibians at the Sam Noble Museum and professor in the Biology Department at OU from 1990 to 2011.  My research focused on the ecology, behavior, and systematics of amphibians, particularly dendrobatid and aromobatid frogs.  In addition to curatorial duties, I was involved in designing museum exhibits, teaching undergraduates, and...