Introduction

Field biologists are a unique breed of scientists who study plants and animals in their natural environments. We often appear disheveled in our baggy, quick-drying clothes and dorky fishing vests bulging with specimen vials, counters, flagging tape, tape measurers, field guides, and waterproof notebooks. Binoculars likely dangle from our sweaty necks. Our backpacks are filled with, depending on our particular field of interest, a portable plant press, newspapers, fruit and seed bags; insect sweep net with detachable handle, Berlese funnel, aspirators, specimen vials, and tweezers; mammal traps, peanut butter, oats, and leather gloves; snake tongs, plastic and cloth bags, calipers, head lamp, and extra batteries; bird bands, pliers, mist nets, and Pesola scales. Often inexplicable to our friends and family members, we tolerate mud, rain, biting and stinging insects, extreme heat and cold, and primitive living conditions.

Those of us who are field herpetologists—field biologists who focus on amphibians and reptiles—have never outgrown our childhood passions of rolling logs in hopes of finding a salamander, watching tadpoles magically transform into frogs, striving to outrun lizards, sneaking up on basking turtles, and attempting to catch crocodilians and snakes without getting bitten. For us, there is nothing more satisfying than spending a day with our favorite animals. We are living our dreams.

That’s who we are, but what exactly is it that we do in the field? We study basic biology (e.g., reproduction, foraging strategies, defense mechanisms, and physiological adaptations); spend long hours watching animals behave (and often even longer hours watching them do nothing); carry out long-term monitoring studies of endangered species; gather natural history data fundamental in framing ecological and evolutionary questions; perform quantitative experiments to answer ecological questions; survey previously unexplored regions in search of undescribed species; carry out biodiversity surveys for conservation and land preservation measures; and much more.

Why this book? I invited a diverse and distinguished group of field herpetologists each to share a meaningful field experience for several reasons. The essays in this collection entertain and delight, but they also offer an understanding for what field biology is, what field biologists do, and how we go about doing it. The book focuses on field herpetologists, but our experiences, and thus our stories, reflect biological fieldwork as a whole. I hope that through these stories, nonbiologists and aspiring biologists will better appreciate the value of fieldwork and the value of amphibians and reptiles we know to be so critical to the health of our planet.

I also hope these essays will inspire young readers and early career biologists to explore the possibilities of field biology. Recently, I interviewed over sixty-five women for Women in Field Biology: A Journey into Nature (Crump and Lannoo 2022). I was struck by how many women told me that they discovered only late in their undergraduate college years that field biology was a viable career option. Some had discovered field biology by accident through reading scientific papers and realizing, Wow, people can earn a living by studying mate selection in dung beetles! What better sales pitch could there be for spreading the word about field biology than the voices of those of us passionate about our careers?

And finally, I hope the book will inspire readers to become more engaged observers of the natural world. In the past several decades, numerous polls and studies carried out by natural and social scientists have documented that much of the human population feels psychologically disconnected from their natural surroundings. Many have lost their childlike sense of wonder. As individuals, families, and communities, we need to strengthen our bonds with nature, for our own mental and physical health and for the health of the environment. I hope the essays in this collection will rekindle readers’ childhood memories of the joy and wonder they experienced while exploring the out-of-doors. And if so, perhaps these stories will inspire readers to engage their curiosity, go outside, and poke around in nature once again.

So, what are you about to read in this collection of essays? Allow me to offer a brief roadmap and a few teasers.

Part 1. Many of us are passionate about field biology because of the thrill of discovery. Robert Espinoza expresses this sentiment eloquently in the opening essay. He writes: There’s no greater high for a scientist than discovery. It’s a cocktail of adrenalin and joy that imbues a pure sense of euphoria… . And like many drugs, it’s often in short supply and addictive. Consequently, the brains of scientists crave it, so we are always on the lookout for opportunities to achieve our next dopamine-induced fix. For field biologists, there’s no place more alluring than nature. For it’s in the field where we feel simultaneously at ease yet invigorated, quieted yet energized. Those sensations often come from a deep appreciation—some call it love—of the organisms we study. You’ll join Espinoza as he assembles puzzle pieces to reveal nine cryptic species of lizards in northern Argentina, and you’ll share in the excitement as Jodi Rowley discovers the frog that sings like a bird on a mountain in Vietnam.

Part 2. The promise of adventure and exploration lures many of us to field biology. David Bickford contends with leeches, gets bumped in the dark by a Papuan forest wallaby, and discovers a new mode of parental care in male microhylid frogs while exploring Papua New Guinea. Maureen Donnelly shares her firsts while exploring a tepui as part of the Tapirapecó Expedition in Venezuela. Karen Lips and two field companions set off to explore Valle de Silencio, a high-elevation bog near the continental divide in Costa Rica, lured by the promise of caecilians and tapirs. The trio never make it to their destination, but for years they have laughed about mystical places where caecilians are dripping from trees and tapirs are prancing in the forest.

Part 3. We have a fascination and love for the animals we study. Alan Savitzky writes about the privilege of finding a Fea’s Viper on Gongshan Mountain of western China—a rarely encountered mythical serpent. Susan Walls has been infatuated with mole salamanders since she was bamboozled by the sight of her first one 40 years ago: an odd creature with smooth skin, four legs, and big floofy, feathery, bright red external gills. Erin Muths has studied a population of chorus frogs in the Never Summer Range, north-central Colorado, for 25+ years. She writes: I will immerse myself in their ritualized world again this spring, and I know that they have changed me in subtle ways I may not even be aware of. Wolfgang Wüster contemplates the resiliency and fragility of life in the context of an encounter with a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake in Arizona.

Part 4. Along with the joys of fieldwork come mishaps and misadventures. When a protective mother alligator threatens Whit Gibbons’ 12-year-old son Michael, who is holding one of her babies, one of Whit’s colleagues yells, Climb a tree! Another yells, Throw the baby in the lake! Whit yells, Run! Kelly Zamudio steps on a Black-Tailed Rattlesnake while studying lizards in the Peloncillo Mountains, New Mexico. It is not a dry bite. Robert Hansen runs into presumed narcotráficos in Sinaloa, Mexico, while hunting snakes with a herping buddy. William Lamar and his herping buddies find themselves delicately balanced on a narrow road in Oaxaca, Mexico, when the right rear tire of their truck dangles over a precipice into black emptiness. In Chiapas, Mexico, an angry mob assumes that Oscar Flores-Villela and his companions are commercial collectors intending to steal a boatload of Central American River Turtles.

Part 5. Field biologists know the necessity of dealing with the unexpected: the twists and turns, which sometimes turn into knots and can make or break a field season. Nature is unpredictable, out of our control, and so we must be flexible. We learn to expect the unexpected. Alessandro Catenazzi’s dissertation research takes a sharply descriptive turn after the excruciating failure of his beach wrack experiment in Paracas National Reserve, Peru. Karen Warkentin, planning to study her escape-hatching hypothesis of Red-Eyed Treefrog tadpoles at Corcovado Park, Costa Rica, waits for an entire month for the rains to come (and considers studying crabs instead). Alison Davis Rabosky stares at her positive pregnancy test result at the beginning of nine weeks of remote fieldwork in Western Australia and later contemplates, Is there some kind of safe limit to how many kilometers you can drive on horrible washboard roads before you scramble your baby’s developing brain?

Part 6. In the end, sometimes it is the people we meet, the friendships we forge, and the students we influence who leave the strongest impressions on us. A strong, long-term bond forms between Sinlan Poo and a Taiwanese cargo ship captain incarcerated in Panama for manslaughter. Lee Fitzgerald, while working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, films an episode of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom television show entitled The Unexplored Gran Chaco with the show’s star, Marlin Perkins. A student holds a tiny, red Amazon Egg-Eater Snake and loses her lifetime fear of snakes during a field course led by Tiffany Doan in the Peruvian rainforest.

The fifty contributors are a diverse group of herpetologists from all over the world: white and people of color; museum, zoo, independent, state and federal, and academic professionals; and early career through retired individuals. Their stories range in time from the 1960s through the present, and they take place in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guinea, Japan, Madagascar, Mexico, New Caledonia, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Sarawak, Slovenia, Taiwan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and from the west to east coasts in the United States. The stories feature diverse habitats and landscapes: beaches, deserts, rainforests, cloud forests, temperate forests, floodplains, páramo, puna, and chaco, and the focal animals include alligators, goannas, geckos, salamanders, frogs, turtles and tortoises, vipers and rattlesnakes, and more. Our tales from the field are as much about us as the animals we study and the experiences themselves.

Collectively, these stories paint a diverse and honest collage composition of fieldwork. They reveal the value of studying animals in nature. And they showcase the charm—even seductiveness—of amphibians and reptiles, animals not always appreciated by the general public. The next time you see a frog, salamander, lizard, snake, turtle, or crocodilian in the field, stop to have a close look. You just might understand why herpetologists find these animals so fascinating and worthy of our love. And you just might deepen your own appreciation for amphibians and reptiles.