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History of North American Herpetology: 2000 - 2008 In 2004, The Ecology, Exploitation, and Conservation of River Turtles by Don & Edward O. Moll. Also in 2004, the term Amphibian Decline started being used more and more. We have known about amphibian decline since the 1980's, but only in the last few years has the scientific society take a more serious look at the problem. In the spirt of coffee table conservation, two outstanding written books on squamata were published. First of which was Dr. Harry W. Greene's Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery in Nature (1997), and the second is Dr. Eric R. Pianka and Dr. Laurie J. Vitt's Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity (2003). Dr. Pianka and Dr. Vitt are the two top lizard ecologists in the world, luckily for us, they are also both authors. Dr. Pianka wrote Evolutionary Ecology, Ecology and Natural History of Desert Lizards: Analyses of the Ecological Niche and Community Structure and The Lizard Man Speaks. Dr. Vitt coauthored Herpetology: An Introduction Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles, coauthored Lizard Ecology with Dr. Gerge R. Zug and Janalee P. Caldwell. Both authors have wrote countless articles in scholarly journals. Herpetile taxonmy has also changed quite a bit in the last 10 years, as DNA-DNA hybridization techniques are being used to find the relationships between herp groups. In the last few years, the genus name for North American Ratsnakes has changed from Elaphe to Pantheriphis and now to Pituophis. Once there were seven subspecies of the Prairie Rattlesnake, now the group is divided into seven separate species according to the book: Biology of the Viper. As we advance in our knowledge of herptiles, it seems a shift towards species specific publicans. One of the first was Dr. Peter C.H. Pritchard's (a student of Dr. Archie Carr) The Alligator Snapping Turtle: Biology and Conservation, originally published in 1989 and later reprinted in 2006. Dr. Pritchard recently wrote Tales from the Thébaïde: Reflections of a Turtleman (2007). Another good one is the Biology of the Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina), written by several authors. A more recent book is the Timber Rattlesnakes in Vermont and New York: Biology, History, and the Fate of an Endangered Species by Jon Furman (2008). Ray E. Ashton and Patrica Ashton's The Natural History and Management of the Gopher Tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus daudin) is another one. This one is unique in that it incorporates management and research techniques for Gopher Tortoise and is geared for people who actually work with the species and other turtles in the field. |
History of North America Herpetology |
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