Thanks to the Louis C. and Jane Gapenski Endowment I was able to attend a field herpetology training course at the Southwestern Research Station run by the American Museum of Natural History. The class is located in the heart of beautiful the Madrean Sky Island Archipelago. The name “Sky Islands” is a local nickname derived from the unique landscape of the area where several regional mountain chains are separated from one another by vast regions of lowland desert. This creates a series of unique ecosystems, each with their own flora and fauna that are functionally isolated from one another, much like an archipelago of islands. The regional habitats include lowland desert, alpine meadows, and riparian areas.
The course took place over the course of a week in August 2026, which is the monsoon season for the region. Each day we would travel to a new habitat to survey for local reptile and amphibian species. The majority of lizard and turtle species in the area are diurnal, so we spent the mornings looking for basking lizards on the rock formations and turtles swimming in the desert streams. In the afternoon we would return to the research station to attend guest lectures covering a variety of topics including desert ecology, field sampling techniques, effects of invasive species, and genetics. Each night we would head back out into the field to look for nocturnal species. Most of the snakes in the region are nocturnal and often make their way to the roads to soak up the last of the days heat. Sometimes we would give them a hand crossing safely to the other side. It was also the breeding season for many of the local frog species, so we went looking for their breeding ponds out in the desert. These ponds were pretty easy to find because a few thousand frogs all calling from the same location creates quite the cacophony!
Throughout the course we learned and practiced several new field surveying techniques, helped remove invasive bullfrogs from the environment, and learned all about the various adaptations that the local species have to the arid environment. In total we found 48 species of reptile and amphibian including 9 frogs, 1 salamander, 18 Lizards, 2 turtles, 18 snake species!
I learned so much on this trip and it was an amazing introduction to desert ecology and field herpetology! This experience provided valuable training in field techniques that will soon be put to the test when I am part of a field expedition to Namibia later this year!
Kelsey Fenner is a graduate student in the Department of Biology at the University of Florida advised by Edward Stanley.
The 2026 Summer Student Travel Awards are supported by the FLMNH Department of Natural History, including funds from the Louis C. and Jane Gapenski Endowed Fellowship. If you would like to help support this fund for future student awards, please go to: