Richard Lehtinen

A Voice to the Voiceless: New Research on the Endangered Golden Tree Frog In November 2022, I had an amazing experience on top of El Tucuche (the second highest mountain on the island of Trinidad). I was lucky […]

New Paper on Squirrel Melanism Another new paper from Lake Barrett’s (’23) Independent Study thesis was just published in Mammalia. Nice work all!

New Publication on the Genetics of Squirrel Melanism Lake Barrett (’23) was instrumental in getting this paper across the finish line. It also marks my first publication with long-time friend and colleague Dean Fraga!

Let the semester begin! Over the holiday break, I got moved into a nice new office with not one but TWO windows! It’s not Hogwarts but I’ll take it.

New snake species for Wooster Memorial Park Yesterday (9/27/2023) on a class field trip, my students and I found a baby milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum) in the woods at […]

Reforestation project kicks off! On Saturday August 26th, volunteers from the College of Wooster swim team helped initiate a reforestation project at Wooster Memorial […]

New (and old) publication on the rescue effect I recently published a new paper providing some of the clearest empirical evidence for the demographic rescue effect that I know of. […]

Poster presented at OHPARC meeting I presented a poster on long-term changes in salamander body size at the annual Ohio Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation […]

Since 2005, I have been formally cataloguing the amphibians and reptiles of Wooster Memorial Park (Wayne Co., Ohio). As of the spring of 2022, I was aware of seven species of salamanders, five species of frogs, […]

David Raines (’15) and I co-authored a poster entitled “Does past reproductive success influence subsequent reproductive performance?” at the recent Evolution conference in Cleveland, Ohio. This poster […]

Congrats to Alexa Rojas (’18), Haley Hartman (’18) and Blake Marlowe (’17) on the recent publication of their (combined) undergraduate thesis research in the Journal of Herpetology!

This morning a new strawberry poison dart frog metamorph made its first appearance. Brightened what had been a bit of a gloomy day. Welcome to this thing called life, little one.

Back in June, Dr. Katherine Krynak (Ohio Northern University), John McCall (Michigan Tech. University) and I completed our fifth year of field surveys for Blanchard’s cricket frog, with the help of three awesome […]

The online early version of our new paper on glass frog communities in old-growth and second-growth rain forests is now available. This paper is the result of seven expeditions over five years to Costa Rica and […]

2020 has been a long year for everyone and it was a challenging to finish my salamander fieldwork for this year. I have several large, ongoing projects with local salamanders but under normal circumstances, I […]

Since 2011, I have been the director of the Fern Valley Field Station, the College of Wooster’s outdoor learning laboratory. This 56-acre property was generously donated to the College by David and Betty Wilkin. M […]

After over two years of research and compiling information, I am happy to say that my new website “Phytotelm Breeding Frogs of the World” has launched! Phytotelm breeding frogs are those that reproduce in pla […]

Just a few days ago, our first paper on melanistic gray squirrels appeared in the journal Ecology and Evolution. This paper was ten years in the making, as the first squirrel surveys in this effort were conducted […]

I sit here in mid-December with the thermometer holding steady at 19 degrees F (-7 degrees C) and all the frogs, snakes, salamanders and lizards in Ohio are down for a long winter’s nap. Only a few weeks ago, h […]

Thanks to Dr. Cori Richards-Zawacki at the University of Pittsburgh and the hard work of Mackenzie Goltz (’20), we now have a dart frog colony at the College of Wooster! These little beauties are originally from P […]