Reptile Fight Club - Grilling the Expert with Joe Mendelson

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

In this episode, we have another installment of Grilling the expert. This time we are joined by Joe Mendelson. Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradioWho will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

all right welcome to another episode of reptile fight club uh we're going to do another segment of grilling the expert today and we have the great fortune of having Dr. Joe Mendelson with us tonight. I'm really happy to talk to him. He was a professor at Utah State when I started up graduate school up there. So I was able to meet Joe. I actually got to go on a nice herp trip with him. So I'm kind of a little bit of a fanboy here. He was kind of the one who taught me how to herb.

And so very, very happy to have Joe on the program tonight. Thanks for being on, Joe, and welcome. Oh, happy to be here. Happy to be here. I'm based in Atlanta, Georgia now, so it was too cold in Utah. I had to get out. Otherwise, it's a great place, but I don't do winters. Right. Yeah, it definitely gets cold here. I think I'd prefer being in Atlanta right now. Oh, yeah. So I think your story is pretty interesting. I read an article that you wrote about kind of that transition from academia over to the zoo field. And, you know, would you mind sharing a little bit of that with us? Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure. So I was never intended to work at a zoo. I love zoos, always have loved zoos. I grew up in San Diego, so the San Diego Zoo was my go-to

childhood zoo. But a career path in zoos had never occurred to me, and no one was talking about it in the circles I was running in. And so I was aimed straight towards academic herpetology, in other words, being at a big museum or university. And I wound up at Utah State University right after I got my Ph.D. And it was a fantastic job. I loved it. And I earned tenure right on schedule. And then right after that, the only thing I didn't, as we were chatting about before the recording started, the only thing I didn't like about Utah is I really, really don't like cold weather.

Yeah, we've got that in plenty out here. It was a great job, and boy, do I not have anything against Utah State. That place was wonderful for me. After I earned tenure, I got a call out of the blue from Zoo Atlanta, where I had an old friend that I knew in graduate school many, many years earlier, a herpetologist. And he was the title of what we called then general curator. So he was a herpetologist. He was not over the herpetology department. He called me out of the blue. And I remember what he said.

He said, hey, Joe, what would it take to get you to move to atlanta like what are you talking about i just earned tenure at our big r1 university i've got everything i wanted right here i'm good except for the the winters he goes well we can beat the winters move to atlanta i'm like as a zoo i don't i don't i don't really know what you're talking about. So he said, let me fly out here and see if I can talk you into this. And essentially what he did is he showed me the Zoo Atlanta's primate research and conservation programs and their giant panda research and conservation programs. He said, we want to put Zoo Atlanta on the map in herpetology for research and conservation. He goes, research and conservation and what you do.

And I thought about it. I go, I can do that. But despite my interest in herpetology, I've never been a big, I've never kept big collections of live stuff at home. It's never been my gig. And so I said, curator for pathology i need to know how to i need to be like a world's expert in husbandry and taking care of these animals and it's not really my background he goes no no no no no he goes you're the research and conservation

person he said how about we have a staff and an assistant curator that that's their job i went oh this is getting interesting he mentioned that it would that we had close associations with Georgia Tech University. And I went, oh, I said I'm familiar with the universities. Anyway, long story short, he talked me into it. So I did the unthinkable. I walked into the dean's office right there at USU six months after I got tenure and said quite respectfully, I quit. I'm out of here.

Obviously, that's how I phrased it. And that was 20 years ago. And man, it's been fantastic. It's really, really, I've never had a regret. It's opened up lots and lots of opportunities for me. And it's, I'm really, I'm not going anywhere. I'm retiring in this case. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, that's really great. So I know, you know, while at Utah State, I remember a talk you gave or maybe you came back and gave it, but it was on, you know, amphibian declines and kitchen and that kind of thing. Was that kind of the research that led into that or was it just kind of in general the different topics that you uh for on the conservation side that the the chytrid uh situation was just exploding when i was at utah state and i was like the rest of the world i was becoming aware of it i was probably a little bit ahead of the rest of the world because of the circles I'd run in. But yeah, that was the conservation side I was getting intrigued in.

Because prior to that, prior to my involvement with amphibian declines, my work in conservation, I hadn't been a lot of work in conservation. I was mostly a straight research guy. But then the Kittredge situation, especially in Central America where I did a lot of my work, was just exploding so fast and so badly. And there were so many unknown questions that immediately turned into an all hands on deck situation. Right. And I got swept into that. And so that's what was happening. And so when Zoo Atlanta called me, they had that in mind, plus my just sort of straight academic level research stuff that has a whole variety of topics. But yeah, that's what they were talking about. And so I just moved my conservation research program across the country.

The culture shock was a little daunting. University and zoos are very, very different institutions. And I took a break from teaching for a little bit just to make sure that I had, I was on the right rails with the zoo and learning the culture differences and stuff.

And then once I realized, like, I've got this, this is good. Then I started teaching again, because I really, really, really like teaching. And so my academic department is at Georgia Tech, which has worked out really well for me as well. It's only about four miles from the zoo. OK, I bounce between the two, although my main office and lab, my main base is at the zoo. But I'm over at Georgia Tech a number of times a week doing something, teaching or meeting with students or using the library.

Yeah. Nice. Very cool. them teaching or meeting with students or using the library. Nice. Very cool. So I'm curious about funding because, you know, you know, at the university, I understand that pretty well. And, you know, I don't know if our listeners necessarily would, but, you know, you apply for grants and get money to do the research you're doing. How does it work in the zoo field? Is it similar or do they have another? For me, it's exactly the same. Yeah okay it's exactly the same uh conservation funds usually come from different sources than research funds so research funds are to speak into the academic nerds out there national science foundation places like that yeah conservation funds can come from a wide variety of sources from you know organizations like uh the you know

some philanthropic i'll just make up a name the johnson and johnson trust sure i made that up that's not a real place and sometimes from private citizens so once in a while the zoo will uh the zoo uh development office will call me and say hey jo, we've got a potential donor that's interested in amphibians and declines and things like that and wants to meet you. Would you mind going out to dinner with them? So I go out to a fancy dinner that someone else pays for. And I just basically talk about what I do and that sort of thing. And sometimes a few weeks later, they go, hey, Joe, you know, we just got fifteen thousand dollars to put into your account or to support your work. I was like, wow, great. And I got a free swanky dinner. It's not a bad deal. Yeah. You don't get to do that with the funding agencies.

That does not happen at universities at all. That does not happen. So to answer your question, yeah, funding, it's not like I got to the zoo and the zoo bankrolls everything I do. It's really kind of the same designs. Like, okay, you want to do that? Okay, how are you going to pay for it? The trick has always been, even when I was at Utah State, is that except for airline tickets, a lot of my work really, just by its nature, is not particularly expensive. I'm not a physiologist. I don't need a bunch of fancy

machines. If I do genomics type work, it's always collaborative because that's also not my background. And then someone figures out how to pay for it. So, yeah, my work is not super expensive.

So the funding thing has never been a problem since I got here. And part of it's the same at university and part of it's a little different, as I described. Yeah. Speaking of collaboration and that sort of thing, I noticed a few papers with Dan Mulcahy. Was he your graduate student or was he? Yeah. Okay. Dan Mulcahy was my doctoral student at Utah State, and he got his degree at Utah State technically right after I left.

A few months after I left is when he finished. Okay. But I remained on his – until my graduate students finished up, I had a title at utah state so everything is still official i didn't i didn't really work on them sure that's good yeah he's now a curator of i'm not gonna get the title right so i won't try but he is uh he's at the natural history museum in berlin which is oh cool yeah that's very cool um do you do much collaboration with any of your former students? Over the years, I've done a lot with Dan Mulcahy, although in recent years, not so much. He has really diverted his interest to Southeast Asia, which is not where I've worked. And so, yeah, some, but not a ton. Most of my work with students is with current students, so Georgia Tech students, which are mostly undergraduates, and that's by design.

When I transferred from Utah State with a big graduate research program to Atlanta, I wasn't in an ideal circumstance to, to be the primary advisor for graduate students. So I just kind of let that go. So I very rarely, I still do it, but very, but not very often. Yeah. And I've shifted to, uh, undergraduate research. Okay. Which I really enjoy.

It's going great. Yeah, it is. It is rewarding to, to work with students in, in one capacity or another in research. And I've, I've also enjoyed, you know, having students in the lab and teaching yeah yeah yeah if this was just a zoo gig without the university involved i mean i i don't think i'd be as happy i like having the students around really keeps you vital yeah yeah well you were definitely fun to herp with and hang out with so i can imagine still the case with the students there i remember you being quite the rock and roll effect aficionado and is that still the case you still oh yeah yeah

probably you can see a couple guitars on the wall yeah yeah that's still that's still my my my hobby for sure yeah i always i always had you in my mind as the rock and roll professor. So it was very cool. Very cool. Fair enough. Yeah. I still do that. Nice. So where is your, I guess, what would you call kind of your area in research in the world?

Where do you like to go and study herps? Geographically, my focus has pretty much always been uh the southwestern deserts or should let me back that up the the north american deserts yeah because they're also in northwestern mexico right yeah southwest is a little parochial so the the north american deserts and then mexico and central america okay south america a little bit but but not a lot so yeah very much still uh the north american deserts mexico and central america although i um my knees went out on me and i'm officially uh disabled nowadays so i'm not in a wheelchair but i can't i i i can't do field work anymore.

Yeah. So I had to replace, uh, field work with, uh, other things. And there's the benefit of being at a zoo. Gee, I've got all these, this huge diversity of really cool animals around me. Let's do stuff with them. That doesn't happen at a university. It's like, Oh, well just go grab the King Cobra and let's see what it does. It's like, that doesn't happen at a university it's like right oh well just go grab the king cobra and let's see what it does it's like that doesn't happen to any university yeah for sure uh so did did a lot of your uh i guess the your amphibian work take you down to the central south america or was that also in the in the deserts of the u.s oh that was a good question that was almost none of that was in the amphibian conservation stuff i wasn't working in the deserts at all, mainly because the really good game and fish departments in the western U.S. and U.S. Geological Service pretty much had that covered. OK, so I went where where I was needed. And there wasn't much, for completely unrelated random reasons,

there was a while there where there really wasn't much of anybody studying Mexican amphibians, except for me. So there was this big hole. I'm like, oh, okay, I'm going to be the Mexican amphibian guy, I guess. Fortunately, that's now changed, and there are plenty of people working on it. But that was not the case 20-something years ago. guy i guess fortunately that's now changed and there are plenty of people working on but that was not the case 20 something years ago yeah so yeah that work was mostly uh mexico and central america and virtually none of it in in the united states for the reasons i mentioned i there was

there were plenty of people and i wasn't needed yeah so is that mostly it was that uh taxonomy or disease you know your chytrid work or there, I was talking about chytrid stuff. And taxonomy, my taxonomic work has been also mostly Mexico and Central America. I sat a little bit in South America and not so much in North America because a lot of the taxonomic problems have been resolved except for switching a few things around here and there. And I've had very little involvement in that sort of taxonomy in North America. Okay.

Well, I'd love to talk a little bit about your work with KITRID and some of those things. So it just seemed like kind of a catastrophic thing that didn't have much of a solution is is that still the case or is that yeah yeah yeah unfortunately that's still the case yeah what um the story actually uh unfortunately for all of us got a lot easier to tell because now the everyday everyday person when you say uh pandemic yeah they know what that means now. I don't have to describe that anymore. And so what happened, it crept up on us, us meaning everybody, kind of unknowingly. And by the time we figured out what was happening, based on some really high-profile disappearances, mainly in Australia and Costa Rica.

And then some retrospective work by our colleagues in Colorado and California started. I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Something's going on here. And slowly over a course of years, we discovered the chytrid fungus, which was completely unknown and unexpected. We didn't even know it was a disease causing. We didn't even know it was a pandemic until we were years into it. And so this is when I was really active in it, working on this sort of stuff.

And then tracking where this pandemic was going, both in space and time. That was the big panic back in those days. As pandemics do, the pandemic with the first known chytrid fungus, the one we call BD, has kind of stabilized and it hasn't disappeared and there is no solution to it. But the pathogen appears to have pretty much burned itself into, not out, but burned itself into a level field. And so we're left with the legacy of that pandemic where a lot of things disappeared. A lot of things crashed precipitously. And some are staying down in terms of population levels. Yeah.

And a few are creeping back up. Okay. So that's kind of where we're at now. And the things that are creeping back up for the most part are kind of doing it on their own. We never found a magic bullet for that fungal pathogen. The big unknown in the world right now is the second, the so-called salamander chytrid fungus that fortunately is not in the new world yet. I personally find that unfathomable that that's true, but I believe the data. State and federal agencies all over North America are swabbing salamanders like crazy and just not finding it. It really seems like it's not here.

That's good. That is really good. Because when it gets here, pardon the cliche, but we've all seen that movie. Yeah, right. We know what's going to happen to the incredible diversity of salamanders, not in your part of the country, but in the eastern U.S. and certainly Central America. Yeah. Yeah.

So we're hoping that doesn't happen. Yeah. And I saw a lot of the trade bans go into effect where we weren't bringing in salamanders from different areas. Yeah. I mean, you guys are old enough. You remember those little, you know, fire-bowling newts that they sold at PetSmart for $1.99 each? Yeah. Those were all wild-caught right from the home range of that salamander kitchard.

They're all loaded with it. And we realized this is a bomb waiting to happen. Yeah. And so that just had to stop and fortunately we were able to to to stop that i'm not a big trade ban sort of person but you just look and go this only has one outcome yeah and yeah these are $1.99 disposable pets right you know people are seriously into salamanders. You can get pet salamanders.

Let's get away with these disposable goldfish salamanders that they sell by the millions. That's what had to stop. That's just, there was no need for that trade. Right, right. In my opinion. I got a lot of flack for that. I got a lot of flack for that. I'm sure.

Yeah. So you were pretty instrumental in that path, I guess. I won't say instrumental, but I was definitely involved in helping push that forward. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Instrumental gives me a little too much credit or blame. I'm not trying to avoid blame, but I'm also not trying to take too much credit. Gotcha.

You can blame me if you want, but don't give me full credit well and i would say that's a that's a good thing to take blame for because i mean at first you know some of the hobbyists might grumble a bit oh we can't get the salamanders we want but at the same time i mean the level of biodiversity of salamanders in the united states mexico you know this area is just uncomparable, right? I mean, it's very high in the world. Yeah. And I don't think a lot of us maybe appreciate that or even, you know, know that. So it's, you know, that's important to first, that's the most important thing is that there's a huge diversity of salamanders here. We need to protect them from these foreign pathogens and keep it that way, right? Keep the diversity high and not see a crash like we did with the frogs.

Yeah. And the people that were calling us alarmists, you know, it's like, oh, you know, come with me to my study sites in Central America. And let me show you these notes of what used to be at this site. And spend a week here. Go out every night. And by the end of the week, tell me what you found. And it used to be at this site and spend a week here, go out every night. But at the end of the week, tell me what you found. And where'd they go? That's where they went.

Yeah. Now go to the Appalachians and hunt salamanders all day. At the end of the day, you can be blown away by what you found. And now just imagine that being decimated. It's like, no, not worth it. This is that trivial trade had to stop. Yeah. Yeah.

Agreed. worth it. That trivial trade had to stop. Yeah, agreed. And so what were some of the clues or hints that you got that this was a serious problem? What kind of led to the discovery of Kittred as a major pandemic? There were a number of people involved. The person that I give the most credit to was my good friend and colleague, Karen Lips. She was not looking for declines, was not a disease ecologist. She was a graduate student just like me at the same time, but at a different university in the early 90s. And whereas I was doing taxonomic work in Mexico and Guatemala, she was doing straight up ecological work in Costa Rica and Panama. Okay. And what that put,

that put her in the right place at the right time to see these declines happen right in front of her. And it was her on the ground observations. Because before that we had Marty Crump's observation that the golden toad disappeared, and that got a lot of attention, appropriately. But Marty, who is one of the best amphibian ecologists in the entire world, at the time was at a loss to explain what happened. In fact, one of her pivotal papers, if you go back to it, the title of it really speaks to just how naive we all were. And she said the title is something very close to, is the golden frog really gone,

or is it really just still sitting underground waiting to come up? That's how ignorant we all were. And she captured it in that title. the answer we now know retrospect oh yeah no it's gone yeah uh and then no one could figure that out and then something a couple similar things happened in australia no one could figure it out but no one found dead frogs no one found dying frogs no one found diseased frogs because sick frogs like sick anything hunker down and frogs decompose especially in tropical forests like within hours yeah you're not going to find a carcass four days later that just never happens so you got to be there when it's happening and that was karen lips she was doing something else but she saw it and she got some samples from these dead frogs

and then the pathologists in australia and a guy named alan pessier working out of um san diego zoo uh they were the real heroes these pathologists because they looked they're looking for something microscopic that they didn't know what they were looking for yeah try that sometime it's needle in a haystack type stuff. Yeah. And then when you look at, you know, pull up micrographs of chytrid fungus, it's just this little circle. There's nothing noticeable or unusual looking about it at all, but these folks were good and they noticed it. Wait a minute. That's, I don't know what that thing is. I don't know what that little circle is. It turned out to be the pathogen.

So some really good pathologists and very astute, observant field ecologists, Karen Lips, who didn't ignore what she saw. That's how we got to the breakthrough. And then it was subsequent work to show that the disease was actually causing these declines. That took a few more years. And Karen Lips was also on the lead of that, in part because now she switched her entire research program to it. Yeah. And in part because she was in the right place at the right time when the declines were happening.

She and I had a really interesting conversation at the Hurt Meetings one year because I was asking her about her work. I said, okay, how come this isn't happening up north where I'm working, in Mexico and Guatemala? She said, how do you know it's not? I said, well, I can find frogs. And then our conversation went on, and she said something that caught my ear. I said, wait a minute. How many frogs do you usually find in your transects? At that point, I'd never been to

Costa Rica or Panama. And she said, oh, you know, 60, 80, 100, something like that. And I went, really? And I went, huh. At my field sites, I find like six or seven. And I thought about it and I thought about it and I went, wait a minute. And I went back and read some field notes of people like Bill Duhlman and Jonathan Campbell and Janet Lee Caldwell that had been in Mexico and Guatemala in the 50s, 60s and 70s. And they were finding 60, 70, 100 frogs a night too. I think these frogs disappeared when no one was looking. I mentioned there was this window of time when kind of nobody was looking at Mexican amphibians.

Yeah, that's when it was. That's when it was. And retrospectively went back and kind of can't reel back the calendar, the clock. But nonetheless, you go back and you start looking for Kitchard and Museum specimen. You realize, like, wait, that's exactly what happened. So I didn't notice it because it was a shifted baseline when I got there. It was normal. It was normal to me. But the conversation with Karen made me go back and look at these old field notes.

And then Karen and I got a grant from National Geographic. Normally what I spent my career doing was going places people hadn't been before to find new species. So this was a turnaround. Now we decided what we need to do is go back to Mexico and go to the places that have been the best documented. And we have these old field notes to see if we can duplicate their work. That was the opposite. I'd been avoiding those places because they'd already been surveyed. Yeah.

I went, whoa, this is different. And Karen said, let's do this, Joe. She goes, here's the deal. She goes, I now have a pretty good idea of what declined sites look like. And she said, and you know Mexico, and you know the sites, and you know the fauna. She said, let's go together. Let's get a grant and go together, and we'll look at it from our two perspectives. And that's when we put it together. I was like, oh, wow, okay. And so, you know, to this day, there's a list of species in Mexico that last time they were seen was before I even started my work. And nobody can find them.

I've now spent years until I had to stop doing field work. And still, they're just not findable. Every once in a while, something awesome happens and someone turns one up. One means not extinct, but one doesn't mean a healthy population. But I'll take what I can get but i'll take what i can get you know i'll take what i can get but there's a number of other ones that simply haven't turned up and it's like you know it's been in some cases 40 years 50 years that's they're they're gone they're gone but there's now plenty of mexican herpetologists doing field work which is awesome yeah that was not the case back in my early part of my career.

Very cool. I mean, not cool. Very sad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the cases. But, you know, that's, I guess the fact that, you know, you, with the help of Karen identified and kind of made us aware of the problem and um hopefully you know enough it had an impact in other sites that hadn't been so heavily impacted um did did they ever figure out kind of where it

came from and and why how it got here or is it just a normal yeah that story was got was that was a big mystery for a while right and i wasn't super involved in that end of it because i'm not a mycologist but um the it turns out there are a number of genetic strains of this particular titrium and some of them are in the new world and don't really cause declines or anything. But a particular genetic strain out of Southeast Asia got moved to different continents. So we have a non-native, not so much a species in this case, but more of a genetic strain is the easier way to think about it. And then it also hybridized with local forms that had been innocuous before, which is why we didn't even know they existed.

Okay. And then so you have this double whammy, depending on the area you are, of an invasive pathogen to which nothing has co-evolved resistance or tolerance. And these genetic hybrids, which are, you know, superbugs. That's kind of a sloppy term, but you get the idea. That's very interesting and very scary, and hopefully it doesn't repeat with the salamanders. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Thanks for connecting the dots there. Oh, I should put a plug in for a really good short film that Karen Lips was involved in. It's called The Waiting.

It's a beautifully illustrated animated short film. And then the narration over the top is her basically telling the story of what it was like to be at these sites early in her career when she was, what she was looking at, no one could, she couldn't make sense of

and no one could make sense of. Really, really well done. It's like 15 minutes long. It won awards all over the country film awards and stuff cool it's it's on it's on uh youtube yeah highly recommended you want to hear the story from the person who lived it and then watch this absolutely beautiful animation that goes along with it oh cool it's it's it's great we'll have to link that in the show notes oh that's a's a good idea. That's a good idea. That'd be cool.

All right. Well, yeah, maybe we'll move on from that topic. It's a little sad. Yeah, that one's depressing. Yeah. Exactly. But I'm curious about, you know, you talked about discovering new species. And that's, I mean, that's probably any herper's dream is to find something new.

Yeah, I'm not going to lie. It's fun. Right? It is fun. You got any great stories for us about some of those? Yeah. I mean, there's kind of new species pop up in several different ways. Yeah. The most exciting way is when all of a sudden there's something in your headlight beam or you flip a rock and there's something there and you go whoa whoa yeah and then a whole bunch of very hard work later you

realize like okay my initial response was correct this is new that's fun yeah they're all fun but that's the most fun right the other way they come is through just carefully going through museum collections and looking for things that don't quite add up. It's like, wait a minute. I know that species. Why does it say, I know it from the Mexican state of Veracruz. Why does that jar say the Mexican state of Oaxaca? It's like, is this just a mistake on the jar lid, which totally could happen? Yeah.

It's like, well, I'm not going to blow that up. I'm going to pick up the jar and I'm going to follow up. I go back to the catalog and see, are these things really from Oaxaca? If they're really from Oaxaca, this is weird. And you realize like, ah, somebody else discovered it, but they didn't realize what it was. Yeah. Like, ah, somebody else discovered it, but they didn't realize what it was. And it's been sitting on the jar for, on the shelf for decades in some case until it caught my eye. And then I was like, oh, this is new.

And I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it alive yet. In some cases, I go back after the fact and go to the field and I see them. But I find them, discovery literally is on a museum shelf yeah and in other cases um basically revising uh widespread species have huge distribution huge distribution sometimes with you know isolated populations here and there you do a lot of slog work with both uh anatomy and also genetics and go through it. You suddenly realize like, yeah, these are not all the same thing.

And so that's still fun. But that aha discovery moment isn't quite there. Yeah. It usually comes at the end of like six years of going through this. You finally go, wow, you know, there's really – we can resolve all this if we recognize these ones from – oh, I'm on the radio. We can't see where I'm pointing. These ones from west of this river as a different species. And so I've discovered new species in all of those different ways.

Okay. Any cool stories that you'd like to share, an example of one of those i remember distinctly i was in the upper amazon basin with bill dillman in the early 90s my first trip to the amazon ever bill dillman he passed away a few years ago but you know he was the amphibian guy of the world and the amazon was his backyard so he knew this place cold so it was a real honor and thrill to be there with him. And I'm out one night and I caught this. So imagine, you know, everyone's favorite red-eyed tree frog. You could picture that, you know, every postcard from Costa Rica, right?

And they don't, and there's a whole group of species they call palomeducines. And they all look kind of like that one we all know, the red-eyed tree frog. But there's some differences, and a couple of them don't have red eyes. They have silver eyes. And those are on the – they're not in the lowland Amazon basin. They're in the cloud forest of the Andes. And I was aware of them, but I'd never seen them before.

But anyway, now I'm down in the lowlands of the Amazon. I look up, and I see this thing with silver eyes on a leaf looking back at me. I'm like, uh-uh. No. No not that that's not right that's not right so i put it in the bag and i i hike back to camp and i get back to camp and dualman had gotten back a few minutes before me he's sitting around by the campfire you know or something like that yeah and he rough kind of guy is like well what'd you get mend Mendelsohn? Anything interesting tonight? You know, snark, snark, snark. I'm like, yeah, I got a final Medusa with silver eyes.

He goes, no, you didn't. I'm just like, all right, Bill, you want to play this game? I pulled the bag out of my coat, handed it to him. He's like, damn. And he got up and walked away with my frog. I'm like, where are you going, Bill? He goes, I got to get a picture of this remarkable frog. I'm like, where are you going, Bill? He goes, I've got to get a picture of this remarkable frog. I'm like, oh, I think I'm right.

I think it is new. And I'll say, it's pretty clear Dolman's never seen it before. And, yeah, and it wound up being a new species. That was in Peru. It's now been found in Ecuador as well. And probably it's got to be in eastern Brazil as well. Although I have to admit, I haven't looked that up. I don't know for sure.

But I know it's been found in, we named it Phylum Medusa Hulli, H-U-L-L-I. Yeah. And yeah, it's now known pretty, not super widespread, but it's in that area. But anyway, yeah, I saw it and those silver eyes tipped me off. I'm like, yeah, this is not supposed to be here. I't know what it is and it was new that was fun that's really cool and i mean you'd have to know quite a bit about the the different species in the area you're going to know that that doesn't fit you know that's kudos to you for recognizing that's something different and you know that's really cool yeah yeah yeah there's credit at two levels here i realized it was something different and it seemed out of place dolman looked at and

knew that it was new off the top of his head but that was 60 years of experience and yeah on his part speaking but i'll give myself credit i knew enough to go wait a minute yeah silver eyes one are only on the cloud forest of the andes and that that's not where I'm at. This one's going back to camp with me. Another time, a new species of toad in southern Mexico. I'd seen a couple of specimens from this one kind of hard-to-reach area, and I thought, if I'm ever anywhere near there, I'm going to figure out how to get back up in there and see if I can get some fresh material, this thing, and a DNA sample.

And I wound up down there one time, and I went in there, and I spent about three days, and I didn't see much of anything very interesting, and certainly not this toad I was looking for. And then there was this huge, huge storm coming in, and I thought of the roads that I'd taken to get in. I thought, oh, man, if I don't get out of here, I'm going to get stuck back here because that storm is a big one. And so I went, OK, I was going to stay a few more days, but I got to go. So I bolt out of there right at sunset, which is not a good idea to be driving really, really bad roads at night, dirt roads. Because what happens if you think about even like potholes, your lights shine right over the top of whatever. Right. So that's what happened.

The road washed out because of this storm. Yeah. And I drove right into the right into it because my headlights went over the top of it. Oh, no. So my truck, it wasn't destroyed. It was damaged, but it was definitely stuck. It was down in this ravine. There was zero chance of getting this truck out.

Yeah. stuck. It was down in this ravine. There was zero chance of getting this truck out. So I climbed out, and I'm sitting there in the rain going, well, what am I going to do now? I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to spend the night here. I'm going to spend a couple days right here. I can't go anywhere. And no one can come or go because I'm now blocking the road. And, well, the ditch in the road had pretty much accomplished that as well and I'm sitting there trying to think about what I'm going to do and this toad hopped by

and I went, dang, that's my toad that's what I'm looking for and I grabbed it and I'm like, alright this was totally worth it I hope my truck's okay I got exactly what I came for that's a very nice consolation prize I would say it was, it made me feel a little bit better there yeah that's a very nice consolation prize I would say a little bit better

oh that's great uh well we were uh I I think you know sometimes you you think about uh the hobbyists or the you know amateur field herpers or whatever and and sometimes we've seen a few few things from their contributions there there's this uh I I'm really into Antaresia, the Antaresia genus, the children's. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are cool. Yeah. And so there, there was this one that kept showing up in Australia on the classified sites. They were calling it a pygmy Stimson's Python. And it was, uh, much smaller than, you know, your average Stimson's python. And I got to go over there, visit a friend, and he had some in captivity sitting on eggs, you know, when I was over there. And so I was looking at it. I got a close look at them.

I'm like, these are not Stimson's pythons. This is something different. That's what I'm talking about. That's the little bug in your head. You're just like, wait, I can't let this go. That's it. That's a little bug in your head. You're just like, wait, I can't let this go. That's it. That's exactly it. And so, you know, I said, well, let's, you know, we were writing a book on Antaresia.

So he said, let's include these and, you know, give them a different name and describe them and stuff. And so I was all excited and went home and I was doing all this research and trying to figure out. I was talking to some folks up at the university. How do I describe a species and things like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then my friend in Australia said, oh, I've teamed up with this guy at a university in Australia, and we're going to go ahead without you. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it never happened. They submitted a paper, and it got kind of kicked out and said you need more or whatever, and then they just let it go. So – and they were talking to the university, but, yeah, things move at a snail's pace. So it still hasn't been described. It's still out there. Oh, wow. I'm worried old Ray Hoser will slap a nail on it or something. Yeah, that's the last thing we need, right?

Yeah. Sometimes you get it wrong, though. Yeah. I distinctly remember one night I was with Dan Mulcahy, who we were talking about, in Guerrero, Mexico, southern Mexico. And I'm really into toads. And this toad's hopping around this dirt road at night. And there's this toad hopping across. And I went, ah, i need some tissue samples from

toads around here i'm gonna get out and grab that yeah so i was driving and so i just stopped the van got out and grabbed it as soon as i picked it up in the headlights i could see it didn't have um the big round eardrum or tympanum that you know that many but not all frogs have behind their eye and this group of toads i said, they all have that. Yeah. And I looked at it, it's just not there. And I'm like, whoa, whoa. And so I started doing my little new species dance a little bit. And I kind of swaggered back to the car.

I'm all proud of myself. I had it named in my head. I was going to name it Bufo A. tympana, which means no tympanum. So I'm all proud of myself. I get in the car and I look at him. I'm like, yeah, I got a new species right there, right there. And I hold up like, what do you think? He looks at me and goes, what do I think?

I think, what's the matter with you, Joe? I was like, what do you mean? I said, it's got no tympanum. Nothing in this group in this area has no tympanum. I'm going to name it Bufo A. tympana. He goes, it's got a perfectly good tympanum turn it around and i turned it around on the other side there was one it's like oh it was just some developmental deformity it just didn't form on that side of the head and i didn't i didn't look

at the other side oops yeah okay he's never let me forget that oh yeah i got i got a little ahead of myself on that one. Oh, that's, yeah, it's okay. I think it's forgivable to get excited about something like that. A paper I'm working on right now, though, I went into it convinced we were going to have a new species. There's this isolated population of a, there's this really common toad on the Pacific coast of Mexico, really super common. And there's an isolated population of it, totally isolated over on the other coast, on the Caribbean coast. No connection between them.

And I knew about that and I've been through there and I thought, one day I'm going to get to this. So I got some tissues from over on that isolated population. I went there and I found them. I got some tissue samples and set them aside and said, one day I'll get to that. And I said, when I do, it's going to be a new species because these things are so, so far separated. And then we just finished the work, molecules, anatomy, morphology, everything. These things absolutely are not different. I cannot explain that distribution, but man, they just, I really know they are not different they just aren't

and that is not what i expected yeah i had my student all wound up and like okay when i'm gonna let you pick the name we get yeah and then i had to call one day i'm like yeah dude yeah you were not naming anything sorry about that because yeah i was wondering i couldn't see how they were different. I'm like, you're right, they're not. Wow. Yeah, that's really crazy how they'd be separated by so far. I guess maybe that's the first step in their speciation. Maybe come back in a million years. Exactly. That's my plan. Yeah, yeah no that's not gonna work but yeah you were in agreement on that that these things are separated but uh it hasn't been long enough

for anything to have happened yeah yeah if they stay separated something will happen but uh who knows i can't predict the future i might i don't i don't go down that path right yeah we were just up in uh darwin in october rob and i and we we visited uh or went up there and we were looking in kakadu you know hoping to see one of those uh uh kipperly rock monitors that live in kakadu and and you know what's the latin name yeah yeah yeah i spent a month with sam sweet i just said up there that's right i wanted to ask you yeah i know that area pretty well yeah oh cool cool yeah those are not easy lizards to find man oh well let's hear some stories about that you know um man they were uh so that was my first time my only time in australia

and first time messing with uh monitor lizards so i was you know basically neotropical boy totally out of my depth but it was fantastic because you know whole new fauna and sam sweet had that place he'd been there a long time at that point he had it wired so i had the best field guy the best field partner in the world and um yeah he was studying specifically movement patterns in Glauridae, Glebopoma, and Tristus, and Scalaris, and to a lesser extent, Gouldi. And they had these sites where they were all sympatric. And he told me, he goes, yeah, Glauridae and Glebopoma, he said, they're like ghost lizards. I mean, we know they're here. He said, I've been here for months.

And he said, I've only seen like two. And this is Sam Sweet. He's the best field person i've ever ever ever met and i said but you got radios in six of them how are you doing that and he goes he goes you got to trap them he said you can't you can't find them you can't see them and if you do see them you're not going to be able to catch them yeah and so he had these ingenious little traps you know non-lethal not not harmful traps at all, to live trap them. And then he would implant the radios. And what we learned from the radios is that one side, it was about probably half a mile from where you could park the Land Rover to get out to the rock outcrops where his focal lizards were.

And you stop on this dirt track, you you know half a mile from these outcrops and uh we had the radio on i had the antenna sticking out the the the land rover window and the headphones on and beep beep beep it's like oh yeah i can hear it uh you know number 17 or whatever is up and then as soon as you stop the car and get out it goes beep beep beep it's like that thing dove in the cracks and we were a half a mile away no wonder you can't find these things they are so spooky you spent some time looking for me yeah i mean did you did you actually get your eyes and hands on some it's not easy one person in the group did see a global palma on consecutive days but probably a total of what five or six

seconds across that time so we were not the person to see it and then we we spent i posted up the next day that that same same window of time i posted up for what just three and a half or four hours just literally staring at this at this fissure with my camera not even looking at it and it didn't do me the pleasure. I remember one day out there you guys have been there so you'll know what I'm talking about. We were there right at the very beginning of the wet

season and I came around at outcrop I was a little bit distant from everybody else. I didn't have the headphones on. Sam and Brian Jennings were doing that and I was a little bit distant from everybody else. I didn't have the headphones on. Sam and Brian Jennings were doing that, and I was just out looking. And I came around the backdrop, and there was this Gleb Opalma just sitting there. I did it. I just saw one sitting there, and it didn't run.

And it was like, I don't know what to do. So I just stood there and watched it, and it still didn't run. I didn't have a camera with me. And I watched this thing do nothing for like 20 minutes. It was unbelievable. And in those 20 minutes, because I knew I couldn't twitch a muscle or it would be gone. Not that I had a plan. I knew I couldn't catch it.

Not a chance. But I had this weird experience. It's like I'm having this moment and I don't know what to do. I just stood there and it was so hot. Those flies that will not leave you alone are crawling up my nostril, in my ears, on my eyelashes. I'm standing there. I can't swat my face.

I'm standing there and I'm so miserable. I finally caught myself. I was like, oh my God, I think I'm standing there. I can't swap my face and I'm standing there and I'm so miserable. I finally caught myself. I was like, oh my God, I think I'm sobbing. I was just kind of weeping a little bit because I was so miserable and so conflicted about not knowing what to do with this opportunity I had. And finally it wandered off and I went and looked down and it was deep in a fissure, long gone. I go back and i told everyone my

experience they're like wow that doesn't happen yeah and then brian jennings who was with us and he just goes so why didn't you catch it it's like gee brian it's not like it didn't occur to me yeah trust me let me in fact come with me and i'll show you where i was and where the lizard was you see there was not a chance yeah not a chance of me getting it. Cause you know how the rocks are there. It can be like 30 feet from something, but there's big chasm between you and that 30 feet and you can't jump over it. You know, that was the situation. So yeah, that was, that was quite a, quite a remarkable sighting.

That's cool though. You got to sit and watch it. That's yeah. And it did nothing it was just basking wow and then it walked yeah i mean this fisher that was uh they're such cool monitors i i did uh after rob and and some of the others left i went over to uh conanura in western and uh and i had a friend that was living out there. And so he, he told me, okay, if you want to see a glower, I go to this spot at this time, wait until the sun hits the rock and they'll come out. And so I went and I sat there and the sun comes and hits the rock and one comes right out and starts doing his thing, you know,

foraging amongst the leaf litter and calling up the rocks. And I, I just sat there and watched it and just oh that's great experience of a lifetime yeah it's fantastic over the next few days in retrospect i realized that's what i had accidentally done yeah i'd stumbled across a spot right at the time of day because i knew what time it was i went back the next day at that time i looked i go oh i see what happened now i happened upon this spot right when the sun hit it and And that's why I sat there for 20 minutes. Yeah. It's just nothing sits fully exposed in 20 minutes at three o'clock in the afternoon in that place.

It's way too hot. Yeah. So I accidentally stumbled across that site. And of course, we tried it on multiple next mornings and never saw the individual again. Yeah. We didn't happen again. Yeah. Just one.

Yeah. Those, man, those some of those goannas are really, really difficult to see, much less get your hands on, right? Yeah. Well, the reason we went to that spot where our friend saw the Glebo Palma was that another friend had done a trip there the year prior or two years prior. And he went up this canyon and there was a glebo palma just sitting right next to the trail side hanging out he got up in its face with his camera and was taking pictures and it didn't move you know it's like unbelievable this is the spot and then he saw another one further down like he saw two glebo palma in the canyon that were not easily spooked

and we're thinking okay well this is the place to see him you know so we were going to replicate that but it didn't happen so like state park raccoons yeah yeah exactly and wow that's pretty remarkable yeah we were hoping to replicate that but didn't get lucky there no but yeah i think that big one must have been like just a big male that was super comfortable with itself, you know, and was was feeling that environment, you know, didn't feel threatened by anything. But yeah, so I don't know if he'd moved on. That's such a transient location relative to the water flow and things that, you know, obviously there's so much variability in that. And there's been a fire that had gone through recently, too, because I was i was kind of hiking around the rocks and you know up the canyon and stuff and yeah there's this big burned out area so who knows chased him

off or moved him somewhere else but yeah saw a couple mertens down there that was pretty cool oh those are great lizards aren't they yeah i got i got to see a few of those yeah yeah never got my hands on one but uh yeah but uh saw them and they're just i but I saw them. I'd never seen big aquatic lizards before. I mean, I knew about caiman lizards and things like that, but I didn't have any experience with them. And just watching this thing, just like moving around like a caiman, I was like, okay, that's different. I've never seen that before. That was pretty cool. Yeah.

Yeah. Monitors are a great group. They're really fun. Yeah. We were able to flush one of them into the water while Justin was in the water. So he was able to film himself swimming with it, which is. Oh, that's pretty awesome. Yeah.

Wow. I need to put that footage up sometime. But yeah, it's cool. And no crocodile. All right. Bonus. Not when we were there. Apparently, like that place floods and the crocs come in and then the water recedes and they go and trap the crocs and take them out.

So, you know, you're hoping they got them all. Yeah. When I was in Kakadu, that was fresh on our minds because it was the beginning of the wet season. So they were all moving in, the the the flooding billabongs and so the rule was if the water's up to your ankle do not go in at night right which is a you know if you're interested in frogs that's just brutal to stand there going yeah they're right over there but i can't i don't dare go in there yeah wow been anywhere were you actually worried about predators before right you know right yeah the amazon right really are you actually worried about Jaguars right but over there it's like oh okay I

gotta take this one seriously okay oh man yeah that's one thing you don't mess around with is a saltwater crocodile yeah right exactly so as far as you know danger and things you know Mexico seems like it could be a very scary place in some spots. Did you have to avoid certain areas or was it just not as bad back then? Or is it just overblown American being worried about everywhere? A little bit of all the above. It certainly wasn't as bad back when I was doing all my work in Mexico as it is now. Yeah.

But a lot of the same issues were going on. And the trick just is don't do anything stupid. You know, don't, every time i have this rule anytime you're going into a new area don't just start herping right get there look around everyone you can meet kind of introduce yourself tell them who you are what you're doing ask them hey is it kind of is it pretty safe around here you know just these sorts of things and so that people know kind of who you are if you show up at night with your headlamp on and start walking around right yeah people are gonna freak out yeah and it's the same in this country right you don't just go you know up and down like i'm thinking of logan well i don't get logan utah i was gonna tell a story but we're

nationwide that won't make any sense, right? You don't just go poking around people's backyards with your headlamp on in the middle of the night without telling them the day before what you're doing. Sure. And so people make those, I don't know why they think to do that in the U.S. and not to do that in other places. It's just stupid. Because, yeah, no one, it never occurs, oh, they're just herping. No, that doesn't make sense to anybody.

So, yeah, just be careful. Don't do anything dumb. Look around, introduce yourself, tell people what you're doing, and then if you see sketchy things happen, or you get kind of a bad vibe, there may be a couple places, like Brian said, people aren't

as friendly here as i'm used to i think i'm just going to maybe go somewhere else and so i've never had any um and that's in mexico in guatemala when i first started working in guatemala the civil war was still happening and that's a whole different story that's a whole different story. That's a whole different story. There were big parts of the country where you just don't go. I remember one year with Jonathan Campbell, Mr. Guatemala. And this whole mountain range that he had really never been into because of the wars, and I had never been to at all. And he finally decided he goes i think it's safe enough i think i think the war has calmed down enough we can get up into that

mountain range he was dying to go he'd never been there yeah and he completely predicted a new species of abronia he said if we could find some old oak forest he said we're gonna find a new abronia lizard and he even detailed kind of what it would look like he predicted its color the auricular spines on its head he predicted all of this wow and we got up there and it took us a few days it's pretty deforested it took a few days and when we found some habitat within minutes we found that lizard it was new and he didn't get the color quite right i made fun of him about that to this day but uh that's just in joking because he was he absolutely nailed it wow um which species was that uh it now is uh abronia frosti okay yeah that's cool that's how that's how we found that he predicted it would it would be there yeah and

once we found the habitat uh we found it within minutes yeah it was it was pretty cool it's pretty exciting and everyone loves a bronia right oh yeah right they're cool cool lizards for sure but yeah you know just it's uh um don't be stupid and pay attention to what you're doing and most importantly acknowledge that what you're doing is weird by everyone else's measure of normal. Right. And so you better be explaining yourself preemptively. You're going to create some concern. And so that's the ticket to staying out of trouble.

Yeah. And speaking Spanish helps enormously. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's kind of what's kept me away. I did do a little trip down there with my friend who spoke fluent Spanish, and it made all the difference. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's kind of what's kept me away. I did do a little trip down there with my friend who spoke fluent Spanish and it made all the difference. You just feel so much more comfortable and it's great. I need to learn Spanish. I know German. That doesn't help me around here much. Not helping yet. Nope, nope, nope. If you want me to translate an article or something from German to English, I might be your man, but not.

I don't know Spanish, okay. If you want me to translate an article or something from German to English, I might be your man. But no, I'm Spanish. OK, that's cool. So do you have any stories where, you know, it was a pretty serious consequences of whatever you were doing? You know, do you have any like scary stories of herping adventures? Yeah, I got one. It's a really long story. Remind me, I'll send you a link to it. I've written it, and I've also did kind of a storyteller's radio show on it. I'll link those.

Okay. Yeah, essentially I got myself accidentally in a really bad situation in the middle of the Guatemalan War. And it was terrifying. I didn't get killed, obviously. But it was, honestly, that's the only time in my life where I sat there and went, this is it. I'm about to die. They're going to shoot me here in just a few seconds. And I somehow talked my way out of it.

That's good. But it's a really long story to put it in the full context. I'll send it. If you want to link it, I'd be happy to send it to you. Oh, that'd be great. That was not good. That was not good. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, man. Such cool stuff. I mean, I was always slated to go down that path and be a herpetologist and go study stuff in the field. Well, you do. I kind of chickened out, and now I just do it for fun as a hobby. At the end of the day, it's the same, right? You're still hiking and seeing cool stuff.

That's true. That's what gets me up every morning. Right. And then I get paid for doing the boring end of it, which is writing it up. And so it's the fun part you and I both have in common. We both get to do that. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I was going to ask, you know, these days it seems like there's not really a path to like a straight herpetologist. It's, it's more like ecology or, you know, other, or, or you're using different

herps as models for, you know, physio. Is that the case? Or can you still be a herpetologist? You know, and you can still be a herpetologist. Um, I, uh, i grew up under that mantra of people telling me you can't be a herpetologist and i was like i just didn't buy it yeah i was just like well what else am i gonna do right i'm not that good at guitar players or the rock star thing ain't gonna happen so i thought well if you can't be a herpetologist i've got to try because i got no other choice and so um yeah the um where you get dissuaded is that there's no job ads that there's very very few job ads that say herpetologist but there are job ads that say physiological ecologist or population geneticist and if you do that with reptiles or amphibians, they don't care.

And you're a herpetologist. It's the job ad that has the different title. Okay. The exceptions are there are job ads that say herpetologists for some natural history museums. The problem is there's relatively few of those positions. So a curator of herpetology at American Museum of Natural History, that would be one. Okay. Or state and federal agencies.

So many states have literally a state herpetologist. Okay. Arizona. Yeah, there's one for Utah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so those jobs exist. So the only truth to what you were talking about is that it's true. With those few exceptions, there were very few jobs labeled herpetologist.

But you can be a herpetologist and call yourself a herpetologist and get these other jobs. Because what do you study? Oh, I just suffered behavior in reptiles. Well, now I just got a job as an animal behaviorist at, you know, at Cal State Long Beach or wherever, some random school. So, yeah, I don't, I don't let, I try not to, when I'm talking to students, I said, don't be dissuaded by that. You know, I never called myself a herpetologist, but I'm obviously a herpetologist, and you can do it.

For example, my job at Utah State, I was hired as a vertebrate morphologist. And they did not care that my version of vertebrates wasn't all vertebrates yeah but like one other person that interviewed for that job i remember who i never met uh was a was a mammal was a mammologist so utah state didn't really care what animals worked on but they did care they wanted a vertebrate person okay and i got it as a herpetologist the mammologist didn't happen to get it but not because he was a mammologist just yes i I don't know. They like me better. I don't know why I got involved. I just got the job and said, thank you.

Yeah, exactly. Very cool. Well, maybe on to another depressing topic, if you're all right with that, the climate change and how that's impacting our populations. I saw you've done a bit of work in that area. Is that not not a ton, but the. You know, that's such a grand and complicated topic that there's no simple answer for what climate change is doing to repel the amphibian, nor is going to do. OK, and that's not a cop out. That's That's just the case because what we're dealing with,

no one's seen before, you know, and model modelers are modeling, but models aren't always right. Doesn't mean the modelers are bad. The modelers would be the first one to tell you is like, Oh, this is not guaranteed to be right.

Yeah. It's just the best we can do given what we have here. Right. But skipping away when I, away, looking around and thinking, everyone gets all hung up on the temperatures. And the direct effect of temperatures I don't see having nearly as much effect as what I'm perceiving in changes in rainfall patterns, that is causing problems. And so the right phrase is climate change. Global warming is the phrase that fortunately is becoming a little bit outmoded and people have moved on. Because you say global warming, it's like, well, it snowed this weekend.

It's not global. It's like, dude, you're completely missing the point. Yeah. So stop saying global warming it's like well it snowed this weekend it's not global it's like dude you're completely missing the point yeah so stop saying global warming yeah and climate change and then all of a sudden it's like yeah it's a little warmer but not warm enough that animals are going belly up but you take especially like uh desert amphibians and change the rainfall patterns all of a sudden they can only take so many years a population can only take so many years in a row of of zero recruitment you know failed breeding right um and you know you think about uh the monsoon rains in uh in west texas southern arizona southern mexico right um yeah everyone every herper knows that West Texas, Southern Arizona, Southern Mexico, right?

Yeah. Everyone, every herper knows that if you go down to Southern Arizona right before the monsoon starts, you don't see a whole lot of snakes. As soon as the rain starts, you see a whole lot of snakes. Yeah, because they need that rain. Yeah. That goes away. Okay, how many years of that not happening is that going to take for populations start to go down and so change precipitation patterns i think are um are it's my impression that those are

having the bigger effects and the temperatures are are might be driving that but the temperatures per se i don't see that as causing the biggest problems. Okay. Although there's a paper on desert lizard physiology that is on my desk to read. It just got published this week that talks about that specifically. And I haven't read it yet, but it looks like it's a good one. It was in the journal Science. Okay. The first author was Christofferson or christopherson or something like that anyway i haven't read it but it looks like it's talking about that temperature effect which i'm curious

about cool yeah that'd be interesting yeah where a lot of reptile species have temper temperature sex determination and if you know you're altering that that could uh you know wind up with an all male population or something you know and that's actually a really good point. I glossed over that. I skipped that for the moment. You're absolutely right. And that is happening. There's some really good studies in the upper Midwest, Michigan, Iowa, places like that. Yeah, and these painted turtle populations, you look at them and they look fine.

There's turtles everywhere. There's no problem here. There's no problem here. It's like, check the sexes there's no female in this population that's younger than like 15 years old it's like you mean this population has been producing babies every year and none of them are females okay this is a this is a dying population that didn't get the memo yet yeah right they look yeah that's the mistake people made they'll be like there's no problem look at all these turtles it was like and they're breeding

look at the babies i'm like yeah yeah yeah let's take a closer look yeah this is details start to come out right now you're right and those those data sets are are are happening so you know wow okay we're gonna artificially prop up these populations by grabbing some turtle eggs and chilling them down, then releasing the females. That's great. If you want to have a population that's completely relying on human intervention for perpetuity, it's like, hmm, that's not a solution either. No, yeah.

It's hard. I guess there's no simple answer and there's no simple cause. No, there's not. It seems like we were a lot more, as a society, a lot more prone to listening to science maybe 20, 30 years ago than we are today. Yeah, I don't know what happened, but you're absolutely right. It's horrible. I mean, try being a virologist during the COVID-19. Oh, yeah.

It's horrible. All the misinformation and just people, they just don't believe you. And you're like, I study this stuff. Exactly. I know what I'm talking about. Come on, guys. And then some of the people, you think about them, whether you know them personally or not, it's like, this is a smart person.

Yeah. Why are they not capturing? It's so obvious. Yeah. Yeah. It's scary stuff. Tricky thing. All right.

Well, we've taken a lot of your time and we really appreciate it. It's been so fun. Can you leave us with another exciting herp story that, you know, herping story that you've had? Oh, boy. On the spot like that. Maybe you haven't told you. I'm sure you've told some of your favorites already. And those have been great. Oh, man, you put me on the spot. I'm coming up blank. No, I'm sorry. I can't do it.

I'll share a story with you that meant that meant a lot when I, when you, I was hurt with you. And I really think, I mean, you kind of showed me the light and on her just, Oh, that's right. Cause I was always looking for herps when I was a kid on backpacking trips, but it was mostly incidental, you know, and it wasn't until I went with you and your class, uh, down to St. George and, you know, we did that. Oh, those were fun trips, weren't they? Man, those were great. Yeah, and so I remember you and I were walking along this, I was kind of on top of the ridge and you were down

in the wash, so I was up on the rocks and you were in the wash and you were walking along and you said, you know, it would be really great if we found a rattlesnake, and then you went, you know, it would be really great if we found a rattlesnake. And then you went, there's one, like just right after that. Just the timing was just spot on. That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny.

And I remember we had the walkie-talkies. And so, you know, I just found a gopher snake and so i you know everybody kind of came over to where i was and i i was uh showing the showing the students and then the call came on the radio we found a gila monster and i just remember that gopher snake and ran like you're like wait bring the gopher snake too i do i remember that exactly because the other thing happened at the exact same time was uh because I got the walkie-talkies because you get on those bajadas and everyone spreads out. And you can't – if someone sees something cool, three-quarters of the class doesn't get to see it because they're just kind of not looking or they're out of earshot. And I thought, I got to get walkie-talkies and give them to like key people.

Yeah. And so that when someone sees something cool, it goes on the radio like, hey like hey everyone head towards the main ridge or the big red rock over there whatever you ever could see because we found a rattlesnake or a gila monster of them yeah and so i distinctly remember that because right when that happened dan mulcahy came on the radio he was all excited because he found a rattlesnake which would have been the first one of the trip which is always exciting it gets on the radio and he had kind of this cocky tone in his voice. Like, yeah, we got a rattlesnake over here at coordinate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, something like that.

And then another student cut him off on the radio and goes, hey, the monster. And then I looked at as low as people. I seen all the people turn and start walking towards where Mulcahy was. And then they all stopped and ran the opposite direction. And Mulcahy gets back in the radio and goes, well, I guess I'll just bag this rattlesnake for later. He was all disappointed. And then we circled back around.

We saw your gopher snake. I remember that. We went and saw Dan's rattlesnake, and we did see a Gila monster because that's kind of the treat. You can't count on seeing those every day. Oh, yeah. That was a fun trip. I remember that one specifically. Well, we were down kind of in the same You can't count on seeing those every day. Oh, yeah. That was a fun trip. I remember that one specifically. Well, we were down kind of in the same area, a little bit further north.

But we had found this Gila monster. One of the guys in the group found it. And it was actually one that we'd seen three years in a row, basically. So, you know, the same animal, same pattern, same area. Oh, wow. I don't remember that. Okay. Found it repeatedly.

This is just a few years ago oh okay okay last year two years ago we found him for the third or fourth time or whatever oh that's fantastic yeah i love stories like that yeah so we all you know come running over to see it and and i'm like oh i've seen that one before i'm gonna go find another one you know just and so i walked i walked you know down the wash a bit and sure enough there was another one you know just yeah and so i walked i walked you know down the wash a bit and sure enough there was another one climbing up on the red rocks i got one guys they're like yeah right i'm like no seriously yeah man if you're bored of gila monsters man it may be time for a new career it's like being bored of monitor lizards. Okay. Yeah. Of course, it was tongue-in-cheek.

I was just getting out of the way so other people could take pictures. That's awesome. That's the most thrilling find down there, it seems. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's time to name that lizard. It needs a name. Yeah.

Oh, and talking about timing, we were down kind of on the Beaver Dam slope. And we were looking for speckled rattlesnakes you know it was in the in the middle of the day and i was up on this area well kind of in the morning but i was up on this ridge and it was kind of a little treacherous i i'm a bit of a rock climber so it wasn't too bad but i was thinking i'm not gonna find one up here and as soon as i thought that i heard a rattle and it was a speck just right there. Oh, that's awesome. That's how I found 99% of my speckled rattlesnakes. It's like I walk around, and then I hear it, and I'm like, there it is.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I found them other ways, too, but most of them, that's it. Just like, oh, it's around here somewhere. Stop. Look around, and you're like, there it is. Yeah. Yeah.

That's cool. Yeah. I'm worried about losing my hearing because we were with our friend who's he was he's over 60 and he was we were walking along and oh we're like rattlesnake and he's like what where i don't hear it he's like i don't hear anything i'm like no oh yeah he was waiting for me i'm not gonna be able to hear rattlesnake rattles wear your earplugs at rock concerts boys and girls exactly if you want to hear rattlesnake rattles wear your earplugs at rock concerts boys and girls if you want to hear rattlesnakes the rest of your life yeah but i i haven't been so i'm worried that's gonna happen there you go uh well we've sure had a had a great time having you on joe

thanks so much for coming oh you bet good to see you guys nice to meet you in colorado yep yeah absolutely and uh yeah well i'm happy to do this for you. Let me know and I'll send you those links we've mentioned. Anything else you need following up? Okay. Sounds great. Awesome. All right.

Take care, y'all. Yeah, thank you. We'll see you. Bye-bye. That was so cool. What a great guy. I don't know. Just lots of good memories just from that, you know, one or two

years of knowing him. Cause I, I was, uh, at the university and, and, uh, had kind of befriended or come in contact with Ben and got, you know, had a friendship with him. And he was kind of my end to the herpetology group. Cause he was doing his undergrad, you know, with the herpetology group. And so he knew all the guys. And so he introduced me to them. And then I met Joe. And Ben talked Joe into letting me come on the herp trip, even though I wasn't in the department or in the class. So he graciously let me come.

So he was really cool, really great guy. That's awesome. But yeah, sitting around the campfire, listening to his stories and hearing him play the guitar or whatever. It was just a blast. Yeah. And really just taught me how to herp and how to, you know, do a herp focus trip. And I, yeah, I owe him a lot. That was, that's great that he came on. So. Absolutely. And so many cool, I mean, so much information on amphibian stuff, which is not, you know, definitely not something we talk about often, but he's of interest, you know? So yeah, I think, I think that was a ton of great content and then

the various links that he'll provide and we'll attach to this. Yeah. All great stuff. Yeah. Well, cool deal. Uh, I'm just on cloud nine after that. That was fun. Good stuff. There's been a ton of good ones lately. People eventually will hear them. And, uh, in some ways I'm really happy with where we're at in terms of having a good backlog. And I'm really excited about sort of fruition on the grilling the expert stuff. And we have guests for Fight Club and things that are kind of falling into place. So yeah, I'm really excited about where it's going. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I, uh, I, I feel bad. Eric's been sick, so we're, uh, we're glad he's feeling better. He's, he was on his deathbed, he said for a week or so and not, not great. So glad Eric's feeling better and appreciate his efforts to, to get this. We can definitely feel his absence when he's, when he's not feeling well. Yeah. So, all right. Well, um, yeah, thanks for, thanks for, uh, doing this. And I mean, all right. Well, yeah, thanks for doing this.

And, I mean, this is two nights in a row recording, so I appreciate your time as well, Rob. Thanks for coming. And we'll thank Eric and Owen and the NPR team. And thanks for hosting our podcast. And we will say thanks for listening. And we'll catch you again for another episode of reptile fight club