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Showing posts from March, 2013

public outreach

Kathryn speaks to students at Glasgow's Hutcheson Grammar School about, 'what's it like to be a zoologist?' Thanks to all those budding young scientists for their enthusiasm!

paper out today: South American salamanders older than the isthmus

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Our Bolitoglossa research is out in  BMC Evolutionary Biology , finding that South America's salamanders colonized from Central America ca 20MYA. The exciting thing is that such a pattern long precedes the putative ca 3MYA land bridge connection, or isthmus of Panama, and is consistent with some new and  controversial  research from  STRI suggesting that the land bridge may be much older . These salamanders are another example of cryptic species, with high genetic differentiation between putative "species" in the upper Amazon. This is a picture of a Bolitoglossa cf. peruviana that I caught in the upper Napo region of Ecuador, and which in all likelihood is not B. peruviana and instead a new species. (Descriptions are underway!) Kathryn Elmer , Ron Bonett , David Wake and Steve Lougheed . 2013  BMC Evol Biol. 13: 59