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Taxonomy: The spy who loved frogs

Nature volume 501, pages 150–153 (2013)Cite this article

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To track the fate of threatened species, a young scientist must follow the jungle path of a herpetologist who led a secret double life.

Before leaving for the Philippines as an undergraduate in 1992, Rafe Brown scoured his supervisor's bookshelf to learn as much as he could about the creatures he might encounter. He flipped through a photocopy of a 1922 monograph by the prolific herpetologist Edward Taylor, and became mesmerized by a particular lizard, Ptychozoon intermedium, the Philippine parachute gecko. With marbled skin, webs between its toes and aerodynamic flaps along its body that allow it to glide down from the treetops, it was just about the strangest animal that Brown had ever seen.

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References

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Author notes

  1. Brendan Borrell is a biologist-turned-journalist based in New York. He contributed to a 2007 review paper on gliding animals, which also included work by Brown.

Authors
  1. Brendan Borrell
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Web focus: Linnaeus at 300

Related external links

Edward H. Taylor: Recollections of an Herpetologist

History of herpetology at the Kansas Museum

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Borrell, B. Taxonomy: The spy who loved frogs. Nature 501, 150–153 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/501150a

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