Business Meeting and Taylor Edwards
Business Meeting and Presentation from Taylor Edwards
Online presentation, November 22, 2021 @ 7:00 pm via Zoom
(link on homepage the day-of)
Business Meeting
Voting to affirm the 2022 slate by current members of Tucson Herpetological Society will take place during the November meeting, either via live broadcast on Zoom, or through a Doodle poll linked at the Tucson Herpetological Society homepage and Facebook page.
Officers (slated for 2022)
President – Robert Villa (continuing)
Vice President – Patrick Brown (continuing)
Secretary – Mark Barnard (returning)
Treasurer – Maggie Fusari (continuing)
Directors (new directors to be slated)
Rhishja Cota (continuing)
John Ginter (continuing)
Ross Maynard (continuing)
[Open]
[Open]
Appointed Directors
Editor of Sonoran Herpetologist – Howard Clark
Program Chair – [Open]
Taylor Edwards
20 years of genetic research on a Sonoran Desert icon: the Desert Tortoise
Taylor Edwards is a conservation geneticist whose primary research focus for the last 20 years has been the desert tortoise. He was instrumental in revising the taxonomy of this group into what are now three independent species, including the recently described Goode’s Thornscrub Tortoise (Gopherus evgoodei; Edwards et al. 2016).
Taylor first moved to Tucson in 1992 to work in the Department of Mammalogy and Ornithology at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. This was his first introduction to the Sonoran Desert and he’s been a passionate advocate ever since. He is currently an Associate Staff Scientist at the University of Arizona Genetics Core where he has been involved with a variety of genetic projects from fish to plants to humans, including helping to oversee the public testing for National Geographic and IBM’s “Genographic Project.”
Taylor earned his Bachelor of Arts in Zoology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and then both his Masters and Doctorate degrees in Wildlife and Fisheries Conservation and Management from the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona. Taylor is a member of the Advisory Board of the Turtle Conservancy, a Scientific Advisor for the Turner Foundation for the Bolson Tortoise Captive Breeding and Repatriation Project and past president of the Tucson Herpetological Society. Taylor also works with National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions as a “National Geographic Expert” and has accompanied programs to US National Parks, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Peru, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.
