Rafe Brown's Lab homepage at the University of Kansas
University of Kansas
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
KU Natural History Museum

Check out the latest breaking news...

leu

Herpetologists name two new genera of Philippine skinks! Tytthoscincus and Pinoyscincus... Read all about them, here (December 2011).

 
worm

Ooooh, gross. How would you like to have a nematode living in your lung? (December 2011). Read about it here

 

New KU Herpetologist position announced!

See: full position description and link to the KU Human Resources site for application procedures
cam

Congratulations Dr. Siler!

Cam just successfully defended his dissertation: "Historical processes and genetic implications of limb reduction and loss in an island skink lineage" (October 2011)
chyt

At long last, our first Asian chytrid survey is published!

Is Chytridiomycosis an Emerging Infectious Disease in Asia? Read the FrogLog version (August 2011).
teeth

Jamie's crocstravaganza comes out at Evolution with coverage from Nature. Stay tuned for the croc-a-palooza (July 2011).
bit Third year in the top ten! The International Institute for Species Exploration recognizes Varanus bitatawa as one of the hottest discoveries for 2011.
s Congrats to Cameron, this year's winner of the SSAR Kennedy Award for best student paper published in the Journal of Herpetology (June 2011).
cas Congratulations to David Blackburn, who just formally accepted his new position as Curator of Herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences (May 2011).
eol Congratulations to Cameron Siler, recipient of this year's Rubenstein Fellowship of the Encyclopedia of Life consortium. See: complete awardee list & press coverage. (January 2011).
virgin Having been covered by all the mainstream press, Grismer's research draws attention from some unusual media outlets (November 2010)
palava Blackburn tops the charts with the the 20,000th frog photograph contributed to AmphibiaWeb (November 2010)
co We join our many friends and colleagues in mourning the tragic death of Filipino botanist Leonard Co. Read about it here, here and here (15 November 2010)
scipalooza SciencePalooza rocks the KU Biodiversity Institute! Read about it here (October 2010)
sahara Funded! Congratulations to David Blackburn, recent recipient of a major NSF biodiversity surveys and inventories grant for work in the Sahara! (September 2010)
Jesse Changing of the guard: Jake leaves for Indonesia and KU Herpetology welcomes new arrival Jesse Grismer... (August 2010)
d Congratulations to Cameron Siler, winner of this year's SSAR Seibert award for the best student paper (Brachymeles phylogeny and body form evolution) in systematics and evolution.
bit Congratulations to Luke and our many colleagues who worked together on the discovery of Varanus bitatawa (April 2010)
Jake is excited because because he has just been awarded a prestigious NSF International Program Postdoctoral Fellowship to fund a year of field work in Indonesia followed by a year of lab work with Ben Evans at McMaster Way to go Jake! (March 2010).
...and Jamie's happy because his doctoral dissertation improvement grant "Comparative Phylogeography of a Dynamic Archipelago" has just been recommended for funding by NSF...well done Jamie! (March 2010).
Wolverine Frogs and Fanged frogs make headlines...McLeod and Blackburn both featured on L.A. Times Top Ten Nightmares from the Animal Kingdom. Read about it here (November 2009).

With a fancy fellowship from the Philippine Commission on Higher Education, Marites Bonachita Sanguila joins the lab to collect molecular data for her dissertation project on phylogeography of Mindanao river toads, genus Ansonia (October 2009).
Allie Fuiten arrives: a new Ph.D. student from the Bay area (with ties to our friends at the Cal. Acad.) joins us to work on the osteological basis of ecomorph variation in Melanesian forest frogs (August 2009).
Congrats to Jamie Oaks who just won the SSAR Seibert Award for the best student paper in systematics and evolution at this year's herp meetings (Portland, July 2009).
Welcome Anthony Barley, a new Ph.D. student who comes from Davis California, where he has been working with the Shaffer lab for the past year (July 2009). First project: phylogeny of cat-eyed snakes.
Who's down with DPP?! Here's to Jamie Oaks and Charles Linkem whose back-to-back Evolution 2009 talks on Dirichlet Process Priors were featured on Rich Glor's Dechronization forum (Idaho, June 2009).  
Welcome Jeff Witters! Jeff is putting NSF RET funds to use incorporating cryptic species delimitation into his advanced biology class curriculum at Olathe South Highschool (June, 2009)
Bad news: Chytrid fungus discovered at two sites in the Philippines (May, 2009). See press release here
Congratulations to Charles Linkem whose Dissertation Improvement Grant proposal (systematics of the skink genus Sphenomorphus) was just funded by NSF (April, 2009)
Ex-herpetologist Jeet Sukumaran (now deep in the Huelsenbeck zone) departs empirical science in style: with a new species of toad named after him (January 2009)...read about it here

Luke Welton joins the lab, planning to work on Varanus trade forensics and phylogeography (January 2009)

Sukumaran and Linkem publish in MBE! "Choice of Topology Estimators in Bayesian Phylogenetic Analysis" — click here for PDF (November 2008)

 

Two-time Fulbright Scholar Cameron Siler heads back to Asia for 9 months of continuous field work! Read about it here and check out the field blog here (February 2009)

Rafe interviewed by National Geographic's Boyd Matson; listen here (October 2008)
Liz Lusher awarded KU's coveted URA grant! (November 2008)
Postdoctoral researcher Dr. Dave Blackburn makes Science's Top 10 stories of the year! (October 2008)
Dr. Mahmood Sasa (University of Costa Rica) and Rafe are awarded a UCR/KU Collaboration Fund grant for research on amphibians in Cosa Rica's dry forests. Read OTS press release here
A big "Reno 911" fan, Linkem goes with a bold new look for 2009!

Congrats to Cameron Siler who just found out that his Dissertation Improvement Grant (body form evolution in Brachymeles) has been funded by NSF! (March, 2008)
Jake in the news.... "I call my discovery The Bat" (pdf)