View the JMIH website!

Submit Abstract (Due March 25)

The four JMIH societies are happy to offer deeply discounted registration rates for students and several grants to support student research and/or travel to the annual conference, as well as awards for best student presentations. See details about awards that you can still apply for:

• The American Elasmobranch Society (AES) sponsors the Jeffrey C. & Carol A. Carrier Poster Award and the Samuel H. Gruber Presentation Award for student members. https://elasmo.org/awards-and-funding/student-awards/

• The American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH) awards include the Gaige Fund for Herpetology, the Raney Fund for Ichthyology, the Robins Award for Marine Ichthyology, the Cashner Award, Stoye Awards, and the Storer Awards for the best poster presentation in Ichthyology and Herpetology. https://www.asih.org/awards

• The Neotropical Ichthyological Association (NIA) sponsors Best Student Oral presentation & Best Poster Awards, if there are enough entrants. https://www.nia-net.org/student-awards
• The Herpetologists League sponsors the Graduate Research Award for student presentations at JMIH. https://herpetologistsleague.org/students/
• The SSAR sponsors the J.P. Kennedy Student Award, the Victor Hutchison Student Poster Award for graduate students, the Henri Seibert Award for best student oral presentation, the George B. Rabb Undergraduate Poster Award for undergraduate or high school students, the Student Travel Award, and the Metallinou Postdoctoral Travel Award. https://ssarherps.org/ssar-awards

To learn more about awards and meeting announcements, view the full invitation to JMIH 2025 from the presidents of the societies: click here.

The cover features an image of a Water Monitor, Varanus salvator, that was photographed by Chan Kin Onn in Perlis, Malaysia. Highly intelligent and opportunistic, this species is both a predator and scavenger, feeding on fish, amphibians, birds, small mammals, and carrion. While populations remain stable in many areas, the species faces pressures from habitat loss and illegal trade for its skin, meat, and use in traditional medicine in some regions. Their adaptability, high reproductive rate, and generalist diet have allowed them to become one of the most successful monitor lizard species in the wild.

Full contents are available online to SSAR members at https://ssarherps.org/herpetological-review-pdfs/. Natural History Notes, Geographic Distribution Notes, and Book Reviews are Open Access and are available for download at the same link. If you are not a member of SSAR, please consider joining the leading international herpetological society. Student and online-only rates are available. Follow the “Join SSAR” link on the home page or click here.

Carl Gans Traveling Fellowship Endowment

Call for Applications for Student and Post-Doc Travel Awards

In 2022, the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (SSAR) was endowed with a large gift from the Gans Collections and Charitable Fund to provide funding for travel to herpetological meetings for graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and exceptional undergraduates.  The Gans Fund continues its extraordinary work promoting meeting attendance and is particularly interested in supporting researchers from across the globe.  To that end, the SSAR is soliciting applications to attend the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (JMIH) in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, July 9-13, 2025 as Carl Gans Fellows.  Students and post-docs should be members of a herpetological JMIH society (SSAR, ASHI, HL) working on any type of herpetological research.  Up to 24 awards will be granted in this cycle ($800 per fellow for U.S./Canadian researchers and $1500 for fellows from other countries).  Priority will be given to those in greatest need (i.e. those for whom the award makes the difference between attendance or lack of attendance) and those from historically underrepresented groups based on gender, race, country of origin, or other factors.

Eligibility Criteria – Applicants must:

1. Be a current student or post-doc engaging in herpetological research
2. Be a member of SSAR, American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH), or Herpetologists’ League (HL)
3. Be a presenter at the JMIH in St Paul in 2025
4. Not have won this award in the past

Application Instructions:

Applicants should complete the Google Form (Application Form) by 7 March 2025.  Decisions will be made, and recipients notified, in advance of the due date for JMIH abstracts (March 28, 2025).  Required information includes:

1. Academic rank (undergraduate, graduate, post-doc).
2. Institution and city/state/country of institution.
3. Membership of which herpetological society/societies.
4. Signed statement of advisor (template provided in Google Form).
5. Abstract of the research you will present. In the spirit of the herpetological research of Carl Gans, which was both diverse and synthetic, and which he disseminated to a wide range of audiences, from the general public to professional academics, the abstract should include a brief statement that places the research in the broader context of the discipline. (500 word maximum)
6. Statement of need for funds to attend the meeting.
7. Optional statement of whether the applicant is a member of an historically underrepresented group based on gender, race, country of origin, or another factor.

Questions?  Please contact Marion Preest, committee chair, mpreest@natsci.claremont.edu

Download Call for Applications: Carl Gans Traveling Fellowship Endowment Call for Applications 2025

Photo of Carl Gans from the 2010 obituary in Herpetological Review by Kraig Adler

July 9–13, 2025 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists & Herpetologists in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

The JMIH website is now live: https://burkclients.com/JMIH/meetings/2025/site/index.html

Abstracts are due March 25. Registration will be done through a separate online system. Presenters must register by May 22.

Stay tuned for more information!

Do you have a toad-ally awesome symposium idea?

Symposia are important components of SSAR at the annual Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (JMIH) that allow researchers to come together and present the latest research in that area. The SSAR invites proposal submissions by March 15 of the year prior to the JMIH when the symposium would take place (due March 15, 2025, for the 2026 JMIH). Proposal criteria can be found on the SSAR website. This coming year the SSAR can support funding requests for up to $2,000 for a sponsored symposium. If you have been thinking about a symposium topic that would be of interest within SSAR at the 2026 JMIH, please consider submitting a symposium proposal!

Need more details? https://ssarherps.org/meetings/symposium-proposals/

The SSAR is pleased to announce that it will continue to support postdoctoral fellows to attend and present their research at SSAR’s annual meetings and meet and interact with leaders in the field. Awards are open to postdocs from all countries. The next round of awards will be made to attend the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (JMIH) in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, July 9–13, 2025.

Applications are due on March 28, 2025. For more details about this award, visit its permanent webpage here.

Questions? Contact Dr. Rayna Bell, committee chair, at rbell@calacademy.org.

Every year, the Roger Conant Grants in Herpetology program distributes 14 awards to students in different areas of herpetology; in our effort to maintain fairness and unbiased in the review process of the applications, we try to enlist new reviewers every year. External reviewers are assigned grants in one of seven categories (Conservation, Field research, Laboratory research, Travel, International, Herpetological education, and Undergraduate research in herpetology). The number of proposals to review will depend on the number of applicants, but we try to make it not more than ten proposals per reviewer. The deadline for the reviews is February 28, 2025. If you are interested, please contact Roberto Brenes at rbrenes@carrollu.edu.

Thank you for your consideration!

Roberto Brenes

Chair, SSAR’s Roger Conant Grants-In-Herpetology

Herpetological Review Volume 55, Number 1, is now available! The cover features an image of Ensatina eschscholtzii, a common plethodontid that is widespread throughout the coastal southern half of California in the United States of America. This individual was photographed by Ryan Singer. This species possess highly active granular glands in their tails that can produce a milky white noxious secretion. Along with these secretions, the Ensatina complex benefits from mimicry of the aposematic coloration of toxic Pacific Newts in the genus Taricha.

Select sections are available open access. To view online, visit: https://ssarherps.org/herpetological-review-pdfs/. If you are not a member of SSAR, please consider joining the leading international herpetological society.

Join Here!

If you receive Herpetological Review in print, issue 55(1) has mailed. Issue 55(2) is close to being finalized and 55(3) is being assembled. We apologize for these delays in publication and are diligently working to get caught up on the normal publication schedule.