History of UT Herpetology, Part 1: The Early Years

February 15, 2021 • by Nicole Elmer
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L: Texas Spiny Lizard in modern photo. R: another Texas Spiny Lizard from decades ago. (Right photo from Field Studies of the Behavior of the Lizard Sceloporus spinosus floridanus)


Patterson

John Patterson from 1951. (Photo: Cactus Yearbook)

This paper was an observational field study of the Texas Spiny Lizard, expanding what was known about the lizard in captivity. At the time, the site of the study, the UT campus and surrounds, were very different. From the paper: “The Campus of the University of Texas was found to furnish most favorable life conditions for Sceloporus consisting as it does of a mesquite grove with all of its ecological accompaniments only slightly altered.” On campus, Newman and Patterson observed the lizard’s daily behaviors, and paid special attention to the role trees played as sources of food, protection, and sun-basking.

Because the School of Zoology was very small in its early years, instructors had to teach diverse subjects, often in areas they were not terribly specialized, or had little interest. Newman needed to have a physiologist on the faculty, and to do this, he simply changed Patterson’s title to “instructor in physiology.” It was an administrative tactic and one that would dampen the relationship between the two men as this move infuriated Patterson.

However, Patterson did not keep this despised title long. Newman resigned in 1911, and Patterson was promoted to adjunct professor of zoology and chair where he would have a long impactful presence.

From this point, not much happened in the world of herpetology at UT. That would change with the arrival of W. (William) Frank Blair in 1946. He was the first to have a lasting impact on herpetology research at the university, as well as to significantly add to the specimen collection.

blair

Blair around 1962. (Photo: Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America)

Blair was born in 1912 in Texas, but his family moved to Oklahoma in 1916. Here he developed an early interest in the natural world while growing up on his family’s strawberry farm. His time as a boy scout, and two influential high school biology teachers, would further draw him into the natural sciences. As an undergraduate, he studied zoology and botany at the University of Tulsa, earned his MS in Zoology from the University of Florida, and his PhD in Zoology from the University of Michigan. After serving in World War II, Blair accepted a position at UT in 1946, and was promoted to professor in 1955.

Blair’s initial research focus was on mammals, with interests in ecology and distribution centering on the concept of a home range. With several colleagues, he wrote the widely-used Manual of Vertebrates. Blair's interests would soon shift to amphibians and lizards. 

In Austin, Blair and his wife Fern bought a 10-acre property where he and many of his graduate students conducted quite a bit of research. Here he carried out studies of amphibian reproduction. During one of the worst droughts in central Texas’ history (1952-1956), he and his students observed over 3000 individual Texas Spiny Lizards for five years. This resulted in the highly-influential, The Rusty Lizard, A Population Study (1960). It was one of the first studies that calculated age-specific fecundity (maximum reproductive potential over lifetime) and survival for a species. The Blairs eventually donated their property, called “The Blair Woods,” to the Travis Audubon in 1985.

In the 1950s, Blair initiated a program to study whether different toad species were able to produce reproductively-viable hybrids, meaning their offspring were not sterile. They had some success providing some measure of relatedness between the two parental species. 

toad

Woodhouse's toad (Bufo woodhousii)

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