Hello everyone and welcome to Episode Sixty Five!  I hope all of you remain safe and healthy out there.  I'm back in the booth after a couple of weeks in Peru and it's great to talk with you all again.

As always, I want to thank all of the patrons of the show – we would not be kicking off a third season without you and I appreciate your support.  To others in the listening audience, if you like the show, please consider supporting it via the So Much Pingle Patreon page. You can support the show for as little as three buck a month - less than a fancy cup of coffee!  You can also support the show via one-time contributions via PayPal or Venmo (please contact me via email to [email protected]).

I also want to mention that my buddy Bryan Hughes and I were recent guests on the Arizona Wildlife Federation podcast, which is hosted by my long-time friend, Michael Cravens.  And of course Bryan has been on my show a number of times and I did an episode with Michael back in season one.  At any rate, Michael had us on to discuss field herping, as a recreational activity and as a recreational activity in Arizona, and it is Episode 12.  It was a lot of fun and thanks Michael for inviting me to participate.  If you’re living out there and you’re partaking of the tremendous natural wonderland that is Arizona, well you should be listening to the Arizona Wildlife Federation podcast.  Michael does a great job with the show and it’s off to a great start.  Check it out!

My guest this week is Dr. Andrew Durso, he is an Assistant Professor of Wildlife Biology at Florida Gulf Coast University, and it’s been my privilege to know him for more than a decade and we’ve worked on a few projects together and I hope that continues.  Andrew describes himself as an ecologist but as you’ll hear from our conversation, he’s involved in other projects outside the focus of ecology, so I will just call him a scientist with a capital S.  Andrew is also the author of the fantastic Life is Short, but Snakes are Long blog, which we cover as well.  We also discuss one scientific paper in particular, "Harnessing the Power of a Global Network of Citizen Herpetologists by Improving Citizen Science Databases", which can be downloaded from Dr. Durso's list of publications.

Thanks so much for coming on the show Andrew!  It was great to chat with you and I look forward to our next meeting.

And thanks for listening everyone! And as always, please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and please take time to rate the show on your podcast platform! The show email is [email protected], and there’s also a So Much Pingle group on Facebook, for discussion, comments, feedback, suggestions, herp confessions, blind snake capture techniques, tips for herping better, etc.

Cheers! Mike