Calendar
September, 2005 Monthly Meeting: Brian Horne Adventures of a Tropical Herpetologist: Stories from Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and Brazil
| Date: | September 7, 2005 |
| Time: | 7:00 PM |
| Location: | Cincinnati Nature Center, Rowe Woods directions |
September, 2005 Monthly Meeting:
Brian Horne: Adventures of a Tropical Herpetologist: Stories from Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and Brazil
Brian Horne has been field herping in such exotic places as Australia, India, South Africa, and Central America, not to mention the U.S! On Wednesday September 7th, Brian will be taking us through a broad based presentation highlighting his experiences. Turtles are Brian?s main interest, and we have not had a good ?turtle talk? in a long time!
Brian has come highly recommended as an exciting speaker, you won?t want to miss this one.
Meet the Speaker:
(A short auto-biography from Brian Horne)
I feel fortunate to have turned a boyhood fascination of reptiles and amphibians into a career that has given me opportunities to travel to all the world?s continents except Antarctica. I was born and raised in rural Virginia in a small community near Fredericksburg, Virginia. My father was instrumental in my earliest endeavors with reptiles, as he gave me my first pet snake, a beautiful juvenile eastern kingsnake at the age of four! My father wanted to instill in me the same appreciation for reptiles and amphibians he had gained from herping in central Florida in the 1950?s with his favorite uncle and occasionally with Roger Conant. Thus, my father encouraged me to spend my youth searching for box turtles, fence lizards, and rat snakes in the wood lots, abandoned cow pastures, and freshwater wetlands along the Rappahannock River. And, my gracious mother permitted me to keep quite the menagerie in her house.
Since my early childhood, I have been ever expanding my field herping experiences. My good friend Larry Rouche introduced me to my first Carolina Bay while herping in coastal North Carolina in the late 1980?s. In the early 90?s, I started visiting Guanacaste, Costa Rica and have since returned 4 times over the past 14 years. However, my field herping reached new levels when I started my Masters in southern Louisiana. As a graduate student of Rich Seigel, I had many great opportunities in the southern US (LA, MS, AL, FL, GA, SC, and NC), as well as the desert southwest (west Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona). But some of my fondest herp memories come from flipping amphiumas off the frontage roads along Lake Pontchartrain?s north shore during tropical storms.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed the herping and life style of the Deep South, I longed to be back in the tropics. Therefore, for my dissertation research I conducted a four-year field project in the Los Tuxtlas region of southern Veracruz, Mexico. With its high rates of endemism and lush evergreen rainforests, Los Tuxtlas is a gem of upland habitat amidst the vast wetlands of Veracruz and Tabasco.
In the years to come I hope to continue with my field investigations on the reproductive biology of Neotropical turtles in addition to restarting my studies on the sawback map turtles of the US.
More Photos of Brian in the Field:
