News

August 2026– Christian and Randy gave invited presentations at the 2026 Southeast Asian Gateway Evolution conference in Phuket, Thailand. It was a blast discussing the state of the field, interacting with new and old friends, eating amazing food, and seeing the beautiful biodiversity of the old world tropics!

July 2026– Christian, Austin, and Perry presented research that they co-authored with Gavin K., Eleanor, Logan, Dylan, and Sadie at the 2026 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in New Orleans. We also got to hang out with future KLab member Ethan Livingston!

May 2026– The 4th annual Iguanathon was a huge success- with dozens of participants from all over Utah and beyond (Arizona, Nevada). This year we explored the Beaver Dam wash north of the traditional site (where an Iguana was spotted almost a century ago), but even with such a large group of people we saw no iguanas (but did see sidewinders, horned lizards, whiptails, and zebra tailed lizards). No data is good data when collected well!

May 2026– The 2026 Reptiles of North American Deserts field biology class was amazing- a great group of students traveled across all of the major deserts in North America, where they observed nearly 50 different reptile species, collected data for projects, and visited several research stations and musuems! Can you spot the lizard in the photo?

March 2026– Austin, Sadie, Eleanor, Kya, and McKinley all presented their research at the annual BYU Life Sciences Library Research Symposium, and did a great job!

March 2026– Randy presented work on unisexual hybrid mitochondrial function at the University of Memphis Health Science Seminar. It was great working on cell culture protocols for whiptails with collaborator Dr. Yufeng Zhang and eating barbecue on Beal Street!

February 2026– Gavin, Austin, and Sadie presented their research at the 2026 Utah Conference for Undergraduate Research (held at Weber State), and Christian stopped by to support them!

September 2025– On one of our last warm days of the year, Arianna, Austin, Christian, Gavin, and Randy went to one of our field sites to take tail samples from non-native New Mexico whiptail lizards for some collaborative, preliminary cell culture work with Yufeng Zhang (U Memphis).

July 2025– With plans to eventually start a BYU research-based study abroad program on neotropical tetrapod biodiversity, we met with old lab mate César Aguilar (assistant professor and herpetology curator at the National Major University of San Marcos) in Lima Peru. We also enjoyed helping his awesome graduate student, Juan Gamboa, with field work in Andean highlands on microteiid biodiversity.

July 2025– Members from the Klabacka, Belk, and Whiting labs at BYU attended the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in St. Paul, MN. We shared our research via poster/oral presentations, attended awe-inspiring presentations, reconnected with old friends, and made new friends with herp- and fish-minded folks! From the Klabacka lab, Randy shared a talk on mitonuclear interactions in parthenogenetic vertebrates and Sadie+Jordan shared a poster on morphological diversity in native/non-native New Mexico whiptail lizards.

June 2025– At an invited talk for the Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences at Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz, Germany) Randy presented theoretical and empirical work on the effects of asexual reproduction on mitonuclear interactions and resultant performance/fitness outcomes.

May 2025– We had a successful 3rd annual (a multi-institutional sponsored event to monitor Utah's only iguana population). We found around ten desert iguanas and enjoyed being around leopard lizards, horned lizards, zebra-tail lizards, and a banded gecko! It was a great time for everyone involved.

May 2025– After weather derailed us, we enjoyed burgers at Kiwanis park to celebrate the end of the winter semester!