The Field Museum At The Amphibians And Reptiles Conferences

Chun Kamei (Collection Manager, Herpetology) gave an invited talk entitled “An introduction to caecilians (Gymnophiona) with a special focus on the north eastern region of India” in the Gans Foundation Symposium on Global Perspectives on the Frontiers of Herpetology. Chun wowed the audience with fascinating aspects of the biology of this little-known tropical group of amphibians, including showing the rewards of her arduous field work in her native region of India. Chun and Research Associate Stephen Mahony also participated in the Gans Workshop on Museum Collections. Project Assistant Madelynn Sinclair gave a paper on “Resurveying the amphibians and reptiles of Chicagoland forest preserves,” coauthored with Research Associate Tom Anton, Michelle Thompson (formerly of the Keller Science Action Center, now Director of Conservation Biology at the San Diego Natural History Museum), and Assistant Curator Sara Ruane. The resurvey work, in the Will County Forest Preserves, is in its third field season, and is funded by a Biota Award from the Walder Foundation to Michelle and Sara. Madelynn, who will be starting graduate school at the University of Chicago in the fall as a student of Sara’s, was also selected to attend the pre-conference Gans Foundation Workshop on Functional Morphology. Research Associate Greg Mayer University of Wisconsin–Parkside) spoke on his and Madelynn's work on “Quantitative genetics in the museum: heritability of morphological traits in the short sea snake (Hydrophis curtus”), work that depends critically on the absolutely fabulous FMNH sea snake collection amassed by Curator Emeritus of Herpetology Harold Voris. Greg also coauthored a poster with his colleagues Tony Gamble (Marquette University), Alice Petzold (Museum fur Naturkunde, Berlin), and Mark Scherz (Natural History Museum of Denmark) on “Sequencing archival DNA from the extinct Anolis roosevelti,” in which they used the technique pioneered by Sara to recover sequenceable DNA from fluid-preserved museum specimens.
July 12. 2024