A professor of vertebrate zoology
On Feb. 5th, we were pleased to welcome the Phi Beta Kappa speaker Dr. Prosanta Chakrabarty from Louisiana State University at the College of Wooster. Prosanta is an old friend from our graduate school days at the University of Michigan. He gave two great talks (see below) and it was wonderful to catch up and reminisce. Come back any time Prosanta!
It took 10+ years, but our long-term monitoring efforts at Wooster Memorial Park have now been published. Thanks to everyone who had a hand in this (especially Derek Calhoun ’11, Jacob Gabriel ’15 and Hilary Edgington ’10)!
Started in 2004, our long-term monitoring study of Blanchard’s cricket frog has yielded additional insights published this week in Ecology and Evolution. Thanks to all who helped make this happen!
A great beginning to spring every year is the Ohio PARC (Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation) meeting. This year it was held on April 2nd in Columbus. In addition to seeing a bunch of old (and new) friends, I was lucky enough to be asked to give one of the keynote addresses.
In addition, two of my students presented posters at OHPARC including Emma Glasson (’25, title: “Living on the Edge: The Influence of Edge Effects on Ohio Plethodontid Salamanders”) and Will Wasielewski (’25, title: “Exploring the Relationship Between a Fungal Pathogen and the Skin Microbiome in Northern Two-Lined Salamanders”). Nice job y’all!
In August 2024, I had the good fortune to travel to Borneo to attend the 10th World Congress of Herpetology (10WCH). This conference (held only once every four years) was held in the city of Kuching in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. I presented three talks at 10WCH, one in a symposium on amphibian conservation (“Conservation status and natural history of a mountaintop endemic: Updates on the golden treefrog from Trinidad” co-authored with Dan Borowsky, ‘23) and two in a symposium I organized with my colleague Yeong-Choy Kam (Tunghai University, Taiwan) called “Ecology, Evolution and Behavior of Phytotelma-Breeding Anurans.” It was a wonderful symposium and conference in a wonderful and exotic city. The list of talks in our symposium can be found below:
Introduction to the Symposium (Rick Lehtinen, The College of Wooster, USA)
Ponds, pools, or puddles? Offspring rearing and site use in Bornean frogs breeding in small aquatic microhabitats (Johana Goyes Vallejos, University of Missouri, USA)
Males care early and more than late developing embryos supports the harm to offspring hypothesis in an arboreal breeding treefrog (Yuan-Cheng Cheng, Tunghai University, Taiwan)
Overcoming the lack of data for rare bromeliad-dwelling frogs from Brazil (Izabela M. Barata, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, UK)
Is bromeliad breeding in poison frogs a commensalism? (Rick Lehtinen, The College of Wooster, USA, co-authors Mackenzie Goltz ‘20, McKenna Gassman ’21, and Vincent Dileo ‘24)
Cooperative breeding of Theloderma asperum (Yi Yang, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Living with the enemy: communication, kin discrimination and cannibalism in poison frog larvae (Bibiana Rojas, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna)
Speakers in the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior of Phytotelma-Breeding Anurans symposium at the 10th World Congress of Herpetology in Borneo.
Scenes from Kuching city and Bako National Park (upper right).