Graduate student Kai Wang has completed the Tibetan portion of his field work and has now crossed the Tibet-Yunnan Province border.  He collected many Japalura (the focal genus for his masters thesis) along the Mekong River in Tibet as well as cool vipers and frogs.  Be sure to also review his previous field update.  Kai is now in NW Yunnan and will continue the survey along...

June marks the end of our normal Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) funded field season.  We had a great year with close to 800 amphibians and reptiles collected!  We visited a total of eight counties in Oklahoma this year, which included nine WMAs and two National Wildlife Refuges (a summary of one refuge trip can be found here).  We look forward to continuing our...

Herpetology Collection Manager Jessa Watters joined an expedition led by Earlham College’s Dr. John Iverson to the uninhabited Allen’s Cays and Bushhill Cay, Exuma Islands, Bahamas from May 16-27.  The trip included a total of 16 field researchers and 6 crew of the ship, the Beacon Won.  We visited a total four islands and studied demography and physiology of two endangered iguana...

We have just gotten an update from Kai Wang, who has been at the China-Myanmar border in southwestern Yunnan Province from May 28-31. He and his colleagues surveyed one of the major natural reserves in the area, Tongbiguan, and found several cool herps, including the first juvenile specimen of Bengal Monitor Lizard from China, and a Big-headed Turtle! All photos credited to Kai...

As field work continues in Oklahoma through early June, under the leadership of field assistant Aaron Geheber, and undergrads Elyse Ellsworth, Brendan Heitz,and Claire Winfrey, the remainder of the Siler Lab prepares for serious international travel for May, June and beyond!  See their research summaries below. Jessa Watters (mid-late May): Jessa joins her undergraduate herpetology mentor, Dr. John Iverson of Earlham College...

As part of the Spring 2015 Herpetology Course (BIOL 4083) taught by Dr. Cameron Siler at the University of Oklahoma, students took part in a semester long, small group writing assignment that formed a large basis of their final course grade. The class was broken up into three groups of seven or eight students, and each group was assigned a distinct lineage of...

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Cameron and Nick of the Siler Lab are joined in the Philippines by Sam Noble Museum Invertebrates Curator, Dr. Katrina Menard, University of South Dakota Herpetology PhD candidate, Drew Davis, and Yale University Post-Doc Dr. Oliver Griffith.  All five researchers, plus their Philippine field crew, have spent the last 1.5 weeks in Aurora Province, Luzon Island, Philippines and have collected ~380 herptiles (including...

Soon after the description of the Sail Mountain Dragon (Japalura vela) from eastern Tibet, China, two more new species of Japalura, namely J. laeviventris and J. iadina, were described from the approximate same region in the Hengduan Mountain Range of China. Despite the distinct scalation and coloration, the two new species have long been confused with a known congener, J. flaviceps. Like other...

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