News

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 Zheng (U Memphis).

With plans to 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.

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.

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 for the Institute for Quantitative & Computational Biosciences monthly seminar series.

We spent two days in southern Utah– primarily to participate in (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.

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