Collaborators & Comrades:
Burbrink Lab
Frank Burbrink
Frank is a curator at the AMNH and our departmental snake guru whose research integrates genomic data with morphology and ecology – he likes things that are new and old fashioned, and eats sakay on his cereal without blinking.
Edward Myers
Ed is interested in speciation and population genomics in America’s warm deserts. He is a former herp department postdoc, and just started a postdoc at the Smithsonian this fall so he can go to South America and catch even more rattlesnakes.
Marcelo Gehara
Marcelo is a postdoc currently working on population genetics of Brazilian herps. Check out his new R package for building coalescent models for use in ABC pipelines
AMNH Herpetology + Affiliates
Chris Raxworthy
Chris is a curator at the AMNH and has been conducing fieldwork and research in Madagascar for 30 years! Chris also has the department’s largest vintage skateboard collection, and he’s not afraid of hot liquids.
Brendan “Bort” Reid
Brendan is a former postdoc in the department who is all turtles all the time (and some darters here and there!). When he’s not in the field he is working on cool popgen + conservation projects with marine and freshwater turtles in the Nearctic.
Rachel Welt
Rachel is a recently graduated RGGS student (WHOOP WHOOP DR. WELT) whose dissertation investigated drivers of speciation in Oplurid lizards on Madagascar – the cutest little Iguanians ever.
Isaac Overcast
Isaac is a Hickerlab doctoral student and honorary herp department member who works on theoretical population genetics and has a refined opinions about the modern chip flavoring industry. Check out his interactive program ipyrad for assembling and analyzing RADseq data.
Sara Ruane
Sara Ruane is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University-Newark, and her work involves the evolution, phylogenetics and systematics of snakes and other reptiles. See her website for cool research opportunities and updates!
Undergraduate/High School Researchers
Tse Chang & Emily Pelayo
Ning & Emily are AMNH SRMP students working with myself and Marcelo Gehara on a species delimitation project in Madagascar using morphological, ecological, and RADseq data!
Maya Juman
Maya has been using geometric morphometrics to see if the evolution of head shape in snakes has driven post-colonization diversification across Madagascar’s heterogeneous landscape. Now she is off to Yale to do even more awesome science!
India Fetterman
India has also been doing Pseudoxyrhophiine snake morphometrics in addition to another cool project exploring SSD in Natricines. Now she is at Vasser & killing it in the Earth Science department!
Eric Chen
Eric is working on several projects in the herpetology department, from population genomics to protein evolution! Next year he will be off to the University of Chicago to pursue a STEM-based degree.
Olga Pinkhas
Olga is a lab wiz and GIS master. Last year, her poster, “Phylogeography of the Malagasy cat-eyed snake” won an award at the New York City Science and Engineering Fair. This year she will be starting in the pre-med program at Brooklyn College!
Other
Small Wonder
Small Wonder is a Parson’s chameleon from Madagascar (Calumma parsonii). He likes large cockroaches and not being looked at.
Shawn Tea
Tea is a very special lab member from Williamsburg who provides motivation & support to all student, faculty and staff members in the department. He likes balls and baby carrots.
