VMN CE Webinar: Appreciate, identify and participate in community science with Virginia’s salamanders
From Michelle Prysby
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This webinar is part of the Virginia Master Naturalist Continuing Education webinar series for volunteers.
Description:
This presentation is an opportunity to explore a group of organisms that have been coined “The hidden jewels of Appalachia'' –– salamanders! Although many are small and seldom seen, these wonders of nature come in a variety of beautiful colors and patterns. Perhaps even more striking than their unique beauty are the stories of how these small predators navigate streams, ponds, caves and mountains to hunt, reproduce, and persevere through environmental challenges. Salamanders worldwide are at risk from disease that attack their skin, the only organ many lungless salamanders use to breathe! Southwest Appalachia is home to most of the world’s lungless salamanders, and understanding disease risk to species from our region is important for preventing the loss of this incredible diversity in the future. This lecture will teach participants the basics of local salamander diversity and identification as well as introduce Project Cybermander: a community science opportunity. Project Cybermander contributors will learn to classify images collected from a real research initiative to in contribution to the analysis of a huge dataset (over 80,000 images!) that will ultimately help understand disease risk for our native species!
Presenters:
Dr. Arianna Kuhn is the Assistant Curator of Herpetology at the Virginia Museum of Natural History (VMNH), the state repository of Virginia’s natural history collections and a hub of regionally-focused research with a global reach. Her research explores how reptiles and amphibians responded to past changes in their environment, and uses this information to understand how new species originate and resist extinction in biodiversity hotspots throughout southwestern Appalachia and the island of Madagascar. Together with her collaborators, she also works to document, describe and ultimately protect reptile and amphibian diversity on our changing planet. When she is not in the VMNH Herpetology lab or out in the field catching snakes, Arianna loves to share her passion for cold-blooded creatures and their native habitats with other outdoors enthusiasts!
Dr. Natalie Claunch is a Wildlife Biologist at the USDA APHIS Wildlife Services National Wildlife Research Center Florida Field Station, where she conducts research on human-wildlife conflict management focused on invasive reptiles and birds. Additional research interests are the intersections between invasion ecology, herpetology, and eco-physiology, such as how physiological responses to novel or stressful environments or exposure to diseases influence success of invasion or resistance to novel pathogens. She has worked with invasive pathogens in amphibians, stress and immune physiology of invasive Burmese pythons, brown tree snakes, curly-tailed lizards, Peters’ rock agamas, and native rattlesnakes, and thermal physiology in panther chameleons, curly-tailed lizards, and native Sceloporus
lizards. Natalie received a B.S. in Zoology from NC State University, M.S. in Biology from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Ph.D. from University of Florida.
Host: Michelle Prysby, Virginia Master Naturalist Program Director
Zoom Recording ID: 84389818508 UUID: kTNMiWp+T9O7k7nvcdLxDA== Meeting Time: 2024-02-27 04:41:55pmGMT
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Description:
This presentation is an opportunity to explore a group of organisms that have been coined “The hidden jewels of Appalachia'' –– salamanders! Although many are small and seldom seen, these wonders of nature come in a variety of beautiful colors and patterns. Perhaps even more striking than their unique beauty are the stories of how these small predators navigate streams, ponds, caves and mountains to hunt, reproduce, and persevere through environmental challenges. Salamanders worldwide are at risk from disease that attack their skin, the only organ many lungless salamanders use to breathe! Southwest Appalachia is home to most of the world’s lungless salamanders, and understanding disease risk to species from our region is important for preventing the loss of this incredible diversity in the future. This lecture will teach participants the basics of local salamander diversity and identification as well as introduce Project Cybermander: a community science opportunity. Project Cybermander contributors will learn to classify images collected from a real research initiative to in contribution to the analysis of a huge dataset (over 80,000 images!) that will ultimately help understand disease risk for our native species!
Presenters:
Dr. Arianna Kuhn is the Assistant Curator of Herpetology at the Virginia Museum of Natural History (VMNH), the state repository of Virginia’s natural history collections and a hub of regionally-focused research with a global reach. Her research explores how reptiles and amphibians responded to past changes in their environment, and uses this information to understand how new species originate and resist extinction in biodiversity hotspots throughout southwestern Appalachia and the island of Madagascar. Together with her collaborators, she also works to document, describe and ultimately protect reptile and amphibian diversity on our changing planet. When she is not in the VMNH Herpetology lab or out in the field catching snakes, Arianna loves to share her passion for cold-blooded creatures and their native habitats with other outdoors enthusiasts!
Dr. Natalie Claunch is a Wildlife Biologist at the USDA APHIS Wildlife Services National Wildlife Research Center Florida Field Station, where she conducts research on human-wildlife conflict management focused on invasive reptiles and birds. Additional research interests are the intersections between invasion ecology, herpetology, and eco-physiology, such as how physiological responses to novel or stressful environments or exposure to diseases influence success of invasion or resistance to novel pathogens. She has worked with invasive pathogens in amphibians, stress and immune physiology of invasive Burmese pythons, brown tree snakes, curly-tailed lizards, Peters’ rock agamas, and native rattlesnakes, and thermal physiology in panther chameleons, curly-tailed lizards, and native Sceloporus
lizards. Natalie received a B.S. in Zoology from NC State University, M.S. in Biology from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Ph.D. from University of Florida.
Host: Michelle Prysby, Virginia Master Naturalist Program Director
Zoom Recording ID: 84389818508 UUID: kTNMiWp+T9O7k7nvcdLxDA== Meeting Time: 2024-02-27 04:41:55pmGMT
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