ABSTRACT

In 2012, MJL brought on RMS to work on the Crawfish Frog project as a Ph.D. student. In addition to her project, RMS helped to supervise Jonathan Swan’s master’s project. Andrew Hoffman assisted with raising Crawfish Frog tadpoles. The spring of 2009 was a heady time for the Lannoo Lab, which by then had been running steady for close to two decades. During the breeding season, Crawfish Frog activity was often triggered by nighttime thunderstorms. One night in 2015, after a thunderhead rumbled off to the east, flashing lightning, a full moon emerged from behind the tall cloud bank. Without a doubt one of the most difficult aspects of the project for the graduate students and technicians was learning to get comfortable working at night in the rain. As Vanessa Kennedy and Jen Heemeyer were standing on the side of the road, watching the fire, an old rusty pickup truck pulled up.