Reptile conference draws hundreds of herpetologists to KU

Weekend has opportunities for public to see live critters, too

From left, Peter Kleinhenz, from Southern Oregon University, Ashland, Oregon, holding a rough green snake and Stephen Ressel, College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine, holding a king snake, visit at a Kansas non-venomous reptile and amphibian species live animal exhibition Thursday, July 30, 2015 at the Oread Hotel. The exhibition is part of the activities of an international herpetology conference in Lawrence that kicked off Thursday and involves about 600 herpetologist educators and students in seminars, multimedia presentations, educational public events and the live animal exhibition.

Peter Kleinhenz is not scared of the 6-foot-1-inch Kansas bull snake coiling around his arm in a meeting room at The Oread hotel.

He’s impressed.

Kleinhenz, however, is a person who’s really into reptiles. And in that sense, the recent Southern Oregon University master’s graduate is far from alone this weekend at Kansas University.

He’s one of roughly 450 herpetologists from around the world attending the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, which kicked off Thursday and runs through Sunday at KU.

Attendees will participate in a number of academic sessions, symposia and tours.

Those include talks by world-famous biologists such as KU alumnus and National Academy of Sciences member David Hillis of the University of Texas at Austin, snake expert Harry Greene of Cornell University, Madagascar explorer Miguel Vences of Technical University of Braunschweig (Germany) and amphibian conservation advocate Tyrone Hayes of University of California, Berkeley.

There are also several events open to the public.

The public can see live Kansas reptiles on display at The Oread hotel each day of the conference, take in multimedia presentations Friday and Sunday at the Kansas Union, and tour new reptile exhibits at the KU Natural History Museum.

Kleinhenz and friend Colin Guiley, a Southern Oregon undergrad, said they came to the conference to meet people in the herpetology field. They included the conference as a stop in a summer field trip across the United States.

“We’re just trying to see the largest number of both birds and herps that we can,” Kleinhenz said, adding that he expected good “herp” spotting in Kansas.

More senior herpetologists in town for the event, including retired University of Oklahoma professor Victor Hutchison, said they enjoyed catching up with old friends and seeing what’s currently going on in the field.

Hutchison said KU was a notable place to convene.

“It’s a very important collection,” he said, “and they have been dominant in herpetology for a number of years.”

This annual meeting was last held at KU in the mid 1990s, said Jen Humphrey, external affairs director for the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.

This is a special year for herpetology at KU.

It marks 100 years since renowned KU alumnus and professor Edward Taylor first published his research, in 1915.

Edward Taylor handles a caecilian specimen, which is a type of amphibian. Taylor was a herpetologist and an emeritus professor of zoology at Kansas University who Rafe Brown calls the father of Philippine herpetology.

Taylor began what is now the fifth-largest amphibian and reptile collection in the world, according to KU. Today, KU’s collection includes 340,000 specimens representing 5,000 species from 156 countries, including the largest collection of Kansas specimens in the state.

This month, the Society for the Study of Reptiles and Amphibians will publish “Herpetology at Kansas: A Centennial History,” by professor emeritus and former KU herpetology curator William Duellman.


If you go

The following events are free and open to the public. They’re happening in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, Thursday through Sunday at Kansas University.

• Exhibit of live, nonvenomous Kansas reptiles and amphibians, 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday at Gathering Room 1 (level B1) in The Oread hotel, 1200 Oread Ave.

• “Amphibians of the Appalachians,” multimedia show featuring photography and music, 9:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Friday at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union, 1301 Jayhawk Blvd.

• “Herpetologists Past and Present,” multimedia show, 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday at Woodruff Auditorium.

• Two new herpetology-focused exhibitions — a display of live anole lizards and a display of student wildlife photography and field journals — at the KU Natural History Museum, Dyche Hall, 1345 Jayhawk Blvd. Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday.