Monthly Archives: October 2021

Episode 50: Herp Science Sunday with Dr. Alex Krohn

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Hello everyone, I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there, and welcome to Episode Fifty!  Yay!  It feels good to make it to half-a-hundred shows.  It’s a nice milestone to reach!.  And this episode features another installment of Herp Science Sunday with Dr. Alex Krohn, and I’m very excited about that and I hope you are too.

Patrons!  I want to give a shout-out to Peter Berg for his one-time contribution.  Thanks Pete!  And thanks as always to all of the folks who help keep the show going and to reach fifty episodes!. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

I’m excited to put out another installment of Herp Science Sunday, as I received some encouraging feedback and comments about the first show Alex and I did.  Plus I just enjoy talking to Alex, his enthusiasm is contagious and I love hearing his perspective on all things herpetological.  We will be talking once again about two different papers, but the conversation also veers off on an unexpected and totally cool tangent and I will attempt to tie it all up in a neat and tidy package in the epilog after our conversation.

First paper up for discussion:

Bromeliad Sampling: A Passive Technique for Arboreal Amphibians across Ecosystems in the Neotropics
Yonatan Aguilar-Cruz, Marıa de los Angeles Arenas-Cruz, Leticia M. Ochoa-Ochoa, and Gerhard Zotz
Ichthyology & Herpetology 109, No. 1, 2021, 211–218

Second paper:

Frequency modulation of rattlesnake acoustic display affects acoustic distance perception in humans
Michael Forsthofer, Michael Schutte, Harald Luksch, Tobias Kohl, Lutz Wiegrebe, Boris P. Chagnaud
Current Biology 31, 1–6, October 11 2021

For this rattlesnake acoustics paper, be sure to check out the associated YouTube video that provides insight into how the experiments were run.

Bonus paper!

Homoplasy: The Result of Natural Selection, or Evidence of Design Limitations?
David B. Wake
The American Naturalist, Vol. 138, No. 3 (Sep., 1991), pp. 543-567
(see page 560 for miniaturization discussion)

You can get all three papers from the SciHub repository, or you can drop me an email and I will send you a PDF.

And as always, thanks for listening everyone!  Please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, how to see your own genome using this one weird trick, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike

 

 

Episode 49: Never Too Tired (To Talk About Rattlesnakes)

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Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Forty Nine!  Things are good here in central Illinois, and I hope you all remain safe and healthy out there. Here we go with another midweek episode because once again I will be out and about this weekend. A lot of folks say that May is THE month for finding amphibians and reptiles, here in the Northern Hemisphere. But I have to say that I am nearly as busy in October as I am in May, and I see herps in comparable numbers. So I have a big block of away-time coming up in mid-October so I will be working in new episodes as I can. And as always, I will be bringing my mobile recording rig on my journeys in order to talk with people, because those opportunities are too good to pass up. And I’m looking forward to some long hikes on warm October afternoons, and cool nights around a campfire. And I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends and maybe making some new ones.

Patrons!  Thanks as always to all of the folks who help keep the show going. To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to somuchpingle@gmail.com).

So this week’s show features another one of those rambling around-the-room discussions that I occasionally capture. And one was recorded this past June, in Mexico City. To be more precise, in a hotel next to the airport in Mexico City, and I had to do some fancy filtering to remove most of the sounds of jet engines taking off and landing. This was at the tail end of a herping adventure in Puebla and Veracruz, mostly Veracruz, and about half of our group had already flown home and the rest of us were waiting our turns. This was a long trip, two full weeks plus travel days, and everyone was very tired when I turned on the recorder. So you can tell from the show’s opening minutes that the energy level in the room was lower than low, but as the discussion progressed you can hear folks getting a little more animated about the subject material and their brains were getting fully engaged, just proving that many of us are never too tired to talk about rattlesnakes.

I want to thank Mack, Andy, John, Bryan, Tim, Armin, Andrew, Pat, and Max for pulling themselves up on one elbow and joining in the discussion.  And as always, thanks for listening everyone!  Please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is somuchpingle@gmail.com, and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers!  Mike