Richard Lehtinen

I’ve done a variety of things in my life for a job. Fast food employee, warehouse worker, grocery store shelf-stocker, golf caddy, corn detasseler. And, this past week, I pursued gainful employment as a snake c […]

A beautiful spring day this morning and instead of staring at a mountain of email in my office, I went out to Wooster Memorial Park. The fresh air and sunshine did me good. Trees are leafing out, migratory […]

On March 20th, the Ohio Chapter of Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conversation (PARC) held its 2nd annual meeting. My student Jesse Garrett-Larsen (’19) and I attended and presented this poster on our work on  […]

Recently, two colleagues and I described two more new species in the frog genus Guibemantis. This brings the total number of species in the genus to thirteen, more than doubling the known diversity in this group […]

Body coloration is important to organisms for a wide range of reasons including mate attraction, camouflage and thermoregulation. Short term changes in body coloration in frogs have been reported for a number of […]

My colleagues and I have just published a paper describing a new rain forest frog in the genus Guibemantis from northern Madagascar.

We named it Guibemantis milingilingy, the latter part of which means “in […]

My students from “Natural History of the Vertebrates” and I set up our wildlife cameras again. This time, we put them out in the forest along the College of Wooster Golf Course, right in the middle of the town of […]

Recently, I got a few wildlife cameras for my “Natural History of the Vertebrates” class. We deployed them out at Fern Valley Field Station for about a month (January and February 2018). The great thing about the […]

On the Caribbean island of Tobago, there is an odd snake. Many snakes are well camouflaged to blend in their environments, to surprise a tasty meal and to avoid their own predators. Other snakes are brightly […]

As I sit here, an ice storm is on the way that will wreck havoc among all of us endotherms that are active at this latitude in January. Our salamander friends, however, are waiting (happily, I hope) below the […]

Earlier this year, my friend Yeong-Choy Kam and I published a paper based on an experiment I conducted in his lab over ten years ago in Taiwan. Time flies! Previously, there had been anecdotal reports of […]

Salamander of the Month – the axolotl

The axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) commonly referred to as the “Mexican walking fish” is featured as this month’s salamander of the month. This amphibian is interes […]

Recently, several colleagues and I published a new taxonomic paper entitled “Cryptic multicolored lizards in the Polychrus marmoratus Group (Squamata: Sauria: Polychrotidae) and the status of Leiolepis auduboni H […]

Salamander of the Month – the Olm (Proteus anguinus)

                                                                             © 2015 Dr. Joachim Nerz

The olm is a cave specialized salamander that lives […]

Earlier in November, our last Salamander Squad outing nabbed four different species (red-backed, ravine, slimy and northern two-lined salamanders) at Wooster Memorial Park. We had three outings this fall and […]

The Wooster Salamander Squad recently had its second outing of the fall on Oct. 8th. Many secretive salamanders were found by young and old! Our next outing (and last of the fall) will be on Saturday November 5th […]

In May of this year, I took three College of Wooster undergraduates to the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica to study frogs, snakes and lizards. April Arquilla (’17) did a field experiment on coral snake mimicry, Ben […]

The very first group of intrepid salamander biologists went out to Wooster Memorial Park on Saturday, September 17th. It rained much of the early morning hours but then let up as we went out into the woods. The […]