Thanks to the travel grant I received from the Gapenski Endowment I was able to travel to Ann Arbor, MI to attend the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles Conference which took place during the summer semester. This conference normally happens once every four years but hasn’t met in eight due to the Covid-19 pandemic. So it was very exciting to be able to attend the conference this year. While there, I was able to meet and discuss my research interests with many other scientists and receive feedback on several of my ongoing projects. I was also able to meet with some of the other co-authors of my in-progress projects which was very helpful in coordinating efforts to finish those publications.

Additionally, I was able to attend a multitude of very interesting talks and poster presentations given by members of the herpetological community. This enabled me to learn about new and exciting research techniques that may help me in my own future research endeavors. I presented a poster depicting my own research on the multiple origins of miniaturization in Cordyloid lizards for the first time. My research on this subject is still in the preliminary phase, so it was very nice to receive feedback from more senior scientists who study similar topics.

After the conference was over, I was able to spend a day visiting the Museum of Zoology Museum at the University of Michigan. Their collection is one of the largest herpetological collections in the country, and I was able to see many lizard species in my taxon of interest (Scincomorpha, the group that includes skinks, girdled lizards, plated lizards, and night lizards) that are not available at any other museums in the country. Here I was able to select specimens to have loaned to the Florida Museum of Natural History to be micro-CT scanned in the Nanoscale Research Facility on the University of Florida’s campus. The final result of two reconstructed micro-CT scans that were used in this research are depicted below.

The image above depicts and average size Matobosaurus maltzahni skull next to a miniaturized Cordylosaurus subtessellatus skull.
The image above depicts and average size Matobosaurus maltzahni skull next to a miniaturized Cordylosaurus subtessellatus skull.

Kelsey Fenner is a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of Biology, advised by Dr. Ed Stanley, Associate Research Scientist of the Digital Imaging Division here at the Florida Museum.

The 2024 Summer Student Travel Awards are supported by the FLMNH Department of Natural History, including funds from the Louis C. and Jane Gapenski Endowed Fellowship and the B.J. and Eve Wilder Endowment. If you would like to help support this fund for future student awards, please go to:

Louis C. and Jane Gapenski Endowed Fellowship
B.J. and Eve Wilder Endowment