Our Speakers

Prof. Eric N. Smith. —Herpetofaunal exploration has been central to him since he was an undergraduate student in Guatemala, 1988–1992, where he conducted surveys of rain and cloud forests of eastern and northern Guatemala. In 1989 he surveyed the poorly known cloud forests of the Andes of Central and Southern Bolivia, and from 1994–1995, he was funded by grants from WCS and Audubon Soc. to survey montane rainforests in Guatemala. As a graduate student at UTA from 1997–2001 he surveyed the herpetofauna of Guatemala under NSF support (NSF DEB-97050277 to J.A. Campbell), from 1992–2001 he explored highlands of four Central American countries, and from 2001–2004 he surveyed southern Mexico (NSF DEB-0102383 to J.A. Campbell). As a postdoctoral fellow working on coralsnake systematics and biogeography (NSF DEB-0416160 to E. N. Smith), and then as assistant and associate professor (Bioclon and UTA funding), Eric surveyed remote areas in India, Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and the USA, and he visited herpetological collections in many countries in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Current interest in his laboratory resides on the Exploration and Speciation in the Volcanoes of the Indonesian Ring of Fire: A Large Scale Inventory of the Herpetofauna of the Highlands of Sumatra and Java, an NSF funded project, DEB-1146324. This project is conducted by an international team of researchers and students from Indonesia and the USA, including, Brawijaya University, the Bogor Museum/Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Broward College, the University of Texas at Arlington, and individual researchers of other institutions. Smith has published mostly on biogeography, systematics, population genetics, morphology, and taxonomy but, he has also participated in studies related to ecology and conservation, venom evolution and characterization, and invasive species. He is currently at the University of Texas at Arlington serving as Associate Professor of Biology and Associate Curator of Herpetology at the Amphibian and Reptile Diversity Research Center.