Herpetologist Featured in Clinton School Speakers Series

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J.D. Willson and attendees at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service (photos by Jacob Slaton)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — J.D. Willson, assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Arkansas, gave a presentation last month as part of the Clinton School of Public Service Speaker Series. His talk, “The Problem of Invasive Pythons in the United States” drew a group of inquisitive participants to Sturgis Hall in Little Rock.

“This is a topic that’s always fun to talk about because it’s meaningful to a whole variety of audiences,” Willson said.

In Willson’s speech, he said that estimating population size and density of snakes is one of the major difficulties facing researchers in this area. Scientists are refining their ways of catching and estimating the population of Burmese pythons in the Everglades, but these cryptic animals are adept at staying hidden.

“These snakes are very secretive,” he said. “Even if you know how and where to look for them, they can be tricky to find.”

Willson’s research focuses on the ecology, impacts and potential for range expansion of invasive Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades. The fast-growing population of snakes was first recognized as established about 13 years ago, but Willson’s research suggests that they have been around much longer than that.

The idea that they were released as a result of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which has been widely circulated by the media, does not match the timeline and spatial pattern of python captures in the Everglades. Their native habitat in Asia is a climate match for much of the southeastern United States, including parts of Arkansas.

“We tend to think of pythons as being a tropical animals, but they are actually found in a wide range of habitats from tropical jungles, to dry regions of India and Pakistan and temperate climates in China and Nepal,” Willson said. “Some studies estimate that a quarter to a third of the U.S. may be viable for pythons.”

Willson’s fieldwork has produced many presentations and papers, including one titled “Severe mammal declines coincide with python proliferation in Everglades National Park,” which appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012. This study provided compelling evidence that pythons have wiped out mammals in some parts of the Everglades.

A herpetologist and conservation biologist, Willson is completing basic and applied research on amphibians, aquatic reptiles and invasive snakes. His dissertation research examined aquatic snake population dynamics and evaluated the critical roles that snakes play as predators within wetland ecosystems. He joined the university’s department of biological sciences in the fall of 2012.

Other speakers featured in the 2013 Clinton School Speakers Series include former President Bill Clinton, former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Col. Ann Wright, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Ben and Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen.