Monthly Archives - March 2020

Dr. Mark Scherz comes on and talks with us about his work in defining the species of Madagascar. What makes a species? It is if they can breed or not? And how does this affect us chameleon keepers? With such subtle differences do the chameleons get confused? He fields these questions and helps us understand evolutionary biology. This is the first of two parts. In the second part, which will launch next week, we dive into the details of the new species within the Calumma nasutum group.

Do you see all those link icons? Go to the website and click on these to find his Instagram, Tumbler, Facebook, and other digital outreaches!

Mark has a poster for the frogs he encountered in Madagascar and the Uroplatus he encountered. Click. above to check them out!

We don't dive too deeply into the paper in the first part of the two part series but here is a sneak peak.

You know I love podcasts! Well, Mark does too and he has his own. Check it out!

In today’s day and age we are very familiar with community. In fact, there has been no time in history when there has been more community! We are able to tie together chameleon hobbyists, scientists, and veterinarians from around the world and share ideas and enthusiasm. This week I talk about the chameleon community and how we fit into the larger reptile community.

For all the community building the internet allows us it has a huge drawback. People end up being a screen name. If I was walking down the street and bumped into 80% of the people I interact with on social media I would not recognize them. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. We have a digital relationship which has its place and through which much can be done. But it is a shadow of what a face to face relationship can be. This is why reptiles shows and regional society get-togethers are so meaningful.

Today I want to introduce you to a special type of event, and that is the herpetological conference. These used to be common place before the internet age. They never went away, but they are once again now starting to gain some momentum and pop up back up in different corners of the globe. I’d like to suggest you consider one of these events. There are a number happening in different countries. At the release of this episode, we in the US are preparing for the Herpeton Herpetocultural Conference coming up at the end of April 2020 in San Diego, CA.  It will be four days of talks about a wide range of reptile topics with some of the most active names in the reptile community. I will be one of the speakers and will be talking on the importance of multigenerational breeders and of them leaving a digital footprint.

If you are within flying distance of San Diego then I invite you to join me and a host of speakers that I have looked up to throughout my reptile keeping life at Herpeton. Click the above image to go to the Herpeton website. You can register for the conference there.

And, definitely let me know if you are going to attend. I will be arranging a chameleon community get together so we can make our connections. Yes, it is important that we get to know other communities, but we ought to do that within our community too! And, heck, maybe we can do a goodwill outreach and do something nice for the leopard gecko people. You know, maybe a cricket gift pack or something. Check out Herpeton.org for registration information. They sold out last year and so I am encouraging my listeners to sign up early for the completely selfish reason that I want a lot of chameleon people there. That way Allen has no choice but to schedule more chameleon speakers for the 2021 conference!

USARK, the United States Association of Reptile Keepers, is fighting for our rights to keep reptiles and amphibians in the United States. I will be looking into organizations in Europe to highlight so that we can get a sense for our community as a global community. But for those in the US, you do not realize how under attack we are until you go to the USARK home page and read the long list of legislations that are being fought every day across the country. Please visit https://usark.org/ for a sobering look at what is going on. This is the reason why we need to be aware and be willing to financially support this organization. Without it, we will be defenseless. Once you look at this page you will realize how much is going on without us even knowing about it.

Yes, the podcast name has changed from the Chameleon Breeder Podcast to the Chameleon Academy Podcast. I will be slowly transitioning all the previous episode show notes to this Chameleon Academy website. The chameleonbreeder.com website will still be active, but it will start redirecting people to this website for the episode show notes that I have transitioned. It will be a HUGE job so it will take a while! But, to be clear, you are able to listen to all the episodes, from 1 to 135 here at this time!

The iPhone app will be changing to the Chameleon Academy branding. There is nothing that you need to do at this time. Just be prepared for a different look to come when the app is refreshed!

NEW! There will be an Android app in the next few weeks. It is has been commissioned and development is ongoing. I will announce it when it is available, of course!

We have a great season ahead! In today's podcast I talk about the direction we will be going. I will have the standard wide range of episode topics that you are used to, but we will be hitting certain topics hard to try and get some results in our personal husbandry! If you have already listened to the podcast and are here wondering what the next step is then you have come to the right place! The two themes we will work on are Keeping Plants Alive and Understanding UVB.

In the Plants Alive! challenge you have the opportunity to select a personal goal for 2020 which relates to your level of plant experience. The object is for all of us to level up in 2020. Whether that means just keeping plants alive at all or becoming an expert on one species you are specifically interested in. We will be doing it all together on the Chameleon Academy Facebook page so we can all benefit from each other. I have a post dedicated to this challenge so you can get the details and get started with choosing your goal here: Plants Alive! Challenge.  And what if you don't have a goal or want to be doing this just yet? Well, feel free to drop by the Chameleon Academy Facebook page and just watch us with our projects!

We will also be focusing our efforts on learning about UVB. My goal is to provide clear, understandable presentations in all media types so UVB will be a more understood topic in the community. There is nothing for you to do at this time other than wait for regular educational outreach and just study the material presented! If you are anxious and want to jump in immediately then there are a number of educational opportunities available. We have been studying UVB for a number of years! The first thing to do is jump on over to the Replicating the Sun page in the academy and get those concepts under your belt.

Click the above image to go to the Herpeton website. You can register for the conference there. Take a look! I was there last year and was very much looking forward to going this year. I was then asked if I would be willing to talk about chameleons at the conference and, of course, I was honored to do so. So I will be there representing the chameleon community and would love to have a chameleon community get-together one of the evenings. Please let me know if you are going!

John Courteney-Smith, MRSB, the Head of Science and Innovation at Arcadia Reptile joins me to talk about his new UVB fixture. Arcadia produces high quality UVB lights and it is encouraging that they are now producing a fixture to drive those lamps....although they have been doing it for years in the European market! So, this is the first tie us across the pond are enjoying the benefit of their expertise. I am excited to test these fixtures. Although I had one of the smaller products to look at during the interview I received my production lamps just a few days ago before the release of this episode. My excitement lies in the fact that it is exceedingly difficult to find out what protection circuitry is in the fixtures available to us so we can't know which ones will drive our light properly and which ones will shorten the effective life.  I, of course, will share my personal testing results!

At this time, you can find the ProT5 lights at LightYour Reptiles.com and Reptile Basics in the US. Apparently, they are already in wide spread availability in Europe!

You can learn more about the ProT5 light fixtures at the Arcadia website