Episode 64: A European Odyssey Examined

06/05/22 • 61 min

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Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Sixty Four! I hope all of you remain safe and healthy out there as we roll into June. First up I want to give a shoutout to the Minnesota Herpetological Society for inviting me to speak at their first in-person meeting since pre-Covid. I made a rocket run up to Minneapolis St. Paul on Friday and back on Saturday, and I talked about The Field Herping Guide, the Pingleton/Holbrook collaboration project, and also, this show and how it got started. It’s a great herp society and they once again made me feel welcome, so thanks again to all the folks in the MHS. As always, I want to thank all of the patrons of the show – we would not be kicking off a third season without you and I appreciate your support. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to [email protected]). HERPETOLOGY SUMMER CAMP! Coming up this summer! Through their Compass Summer Experience program, Montreat College is hosting their annual Herpetology Summer Camp for high school students, from June 19th thru the 24th, with an option for an additional week thru July 1st. The camp is hosted by Professor Josh Holbrook, and students will experience amphibians and reptiles through a blend of classroom and field sessions. For more information and to register, see the Herpetology Summer Experience page. This week's show is a discussion of a recent field herping trip to Greece, Hungary, and Slovenia. I set up a microphone in our AirBNB suite at the end of the trip, in order to get everyone's impressions of the trip. Special thanks to John Burris, Matt Cage, Bryan Hughes, Pat Kain, Chris MacDonald, Jeff Martineau, Erik McCormick, Anniek Tump, Gerrit Verspui, and Tim Warfel. And thanks for listening everyone! And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is [email protected], and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, herping tips for the Acropolis, tips for herping better, etc. Cheers! Mike

Previous Episode

Episode 63: Herp Science Sunday with Drs. Alex Krohn and Drew Davis

Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Sixty Three! I hope all of you remain safe and healthy out there as we feature yet another Herp Science Sunday episode, which features aquatic turtles and drones - yay science! As always, I want to thank all of the patrons of the show – we would not be kicking off a third season without you and I appreciate your support. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to [email protected]). HERPETOLOGY SUMMER CAMP! Coming up this summer! Through their Compass Summer Experience program, Montreat College is hosting their annual Herpetology Summer Camp for high school students, from June 19th thru the 24th, with an option for an additional week thru July 1st. The camp is hosted by Professor Josh Holbrook, and students will experience amphibians and reptiles through a blend of classroom and field sessions. For more information and to register, see the Herpetology Summer Experience page. This Herp Science Sunday is a three-person conversation between me, Dr. Alex Krohn, and Dr. Drew Davis, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Drew describes the details of a drone survey project along the Rio Grande drainage in south Texas, which looked for presence and numbers of the Rio Grande Cooter (Pseudemys gorzugi). The results are published in a PLOS ONE research article entitled: A drone-based survey for large, basking freshwater turtle species and the authors are Amy P. Bogolin, Drew R. Davis, Richard J. Kline, and Abdullah F. Rahman. You can download the paper as a PDF from the link above, or you can contact me and I will email you a copy. I enjoyed our conversation and was amazed at all of the logistical and bureaucratic hurdles that needed to be cleared to do this survey. Dr. Davis is also the chief editor for the SSAR publication Herpetological Review, which we also discuss for a bit. I should also mention that Drew is also researching the distribution and ecology of the threatened Black-spotted Newt (Notophthalmus meridionalis) in south Texas. Did I mention he's very busy? Thank you Drew for coming on the show, and thanks as always to Alex, who makes Herp Science Sunday possible. And thanks for listening everyone! And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is [email protected], and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, drone acrobatics exercises, tips for herping better, etc. Cheers! Mike

Next Episode

Episode 65: Snakes are Long with Dr. Andrew Durso

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Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Sixty Five! I hope all of you remain safe and healthy out there. I'm back in the booth after a couple of weeks in Peru and it's great to talk with you all again. As always, I want to thank all of the patrons of the show – we would not be kicking off a third season without you and I appreciate your support. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as little as three buck a month - less than a fancy cup of coffee! You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to [email protected]). I also want to mention that my buddy Bryan Hughes and I were recent guests on the Arizona Wildlife Federation podcast, which is hosted by my long-time friend, Michael Cravens. And of course Bryan has been on my show a number of times and I did an episode with Michael back in season one. At any rate, Michael had us on to discuss field herping, as a recreational activity and as a recreational activity in Arizona, and it is Episode 12. It was a lot of fun and thanks Michael for inviting me to participate. If you’re living out there and you’re partaking of the tremendous natural wonderland that is Arizona, well you should be listening to the Arizona Wildlife Federation podcast. Michael does a great job with the show and it’s off to a great start. Check it out! My guest this week is Dr. Andrew Durso, he is an Assistant Professor of Wildlife Biology at Florida Gulf Coast University, and it’s been my privilege to know him for more than a decade and we’ve worked on a few projects together and I hope that continues. Andrew describes himself as an ecologist but as you’ll hear from our conversation, he’s involved in other projects outside the focus of ecology, so I will just call him a scientist with a capital S. Andrew is also the author of the fantastic Life is Short, but Snakes are Long blog, which we cover as well. We also discuss one scientific paper in particular, "Harnessing the Power of a Global Network of Citizen Herpetologists by Improving Citizen Science Databases", which can be downloaded from Dr. Durso's list of publications. Thanks so much for coming on the show Andrew! It was great to chat with you and I look forward to our next meeting. And thanks for listening everyone! And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is [email protected], and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, blind snake capture techniques, tips for herping better, etc. Cheers! Mike