2023 was an exceptionally challenging year, with a lot of interesting developments to reflect on. My year was unusual, in that it was dominated not by publications or travel, as is usual for me, but instead by grant writing and training.
Scientific Outputs
I had nine papers published in 2023, although one is technically still an accepted manuscript and not fully published yet. Although I am very proud of the nine papers that came out this year, it was fewer than I had anticipated or planned. Just one of these was a first author paper, and one a senior author paper—this is very unusual for me, and a little frustrating, but I was not able to get the papers I am leading to move forward while I was focusing on grants and training things.
As usual, most of my publications for the year were taxonomic/systematic in focus. Compared to last year, there were only a handful of new species among these: five frogs (four Guibemantis, one Blommersia), and one gecko (a Uroplatus). Two of the papers with a systematic focus also just revealed and discussed important diversity (in Uroplatus sikorae and U. sameiti, and Platypelis mavomavo) without justifying describing new taxa.
The three non-systematic papers from this year, however, stand out. In my first publication of the year, we documented the fascinating evolutionary patterns shown by the reptiles and amphibians on Montagne d’Ambre in northern Madagascar—the culmination of a six or seven year project. This puts this mountain on the map as an exciting system for evolutionary study, but also documents landscape-scale community turnover and
Intense re-assessment of amphibians of Madagascar was kickstarted at the ACSAM 2 meeting at Centre Valbio, Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar, in 2014. Clockwise at table from bottom left: Jana Riemann, Frank Glaw, Franco Andreone, Jennifer Luedtke, and the late Phil Bishop. Also occasionally joining us were Carl Hutter, Julian Glos, and others.
Next on the list, a monumental effort by the IUCN Species Survival Commission Amphibian Specialist Group made the cover of Nature in October. The long (and enjoyable) hours I spent working with my fellow commissioners (especially Frank Glaw) and Jennifer Luedtke and Louise Hobin to assess the amphibians of Madagascar were surely matched by dozens of other teams working to assess each region’s species, leading to the completion of the second Global Amphibian Assessment in 2022. This paper drew together all of that data, revealing global trends for amphibians. The outlook is pretty bleak, though there are a few positive points sprinkled in there. As you might imagine, the paper received widespread media attention. I myself was interviewed for a Danish article on the topic.
Finally, the latest publication—still an accepted manuscript in press, but Open Access and available to read—was a fantastic and fascinating collaboration with Susanne Renner, Miguel Vences, Conrad Schoch, and Marc Gottschling, in which we discuss how DNA sequences from type specimens—the reference material that all Linnean taxonomy is founded upon—are stored and flagged in INSDC databases, especially NCBI GenBank. This is an important topic, given how crucial correct identification is and will continue to be into the future. This paper came together over several zoom meetings and long email chains. In every meeting, I learned more about how the different codes operate, and especially every time we would talk with Conrad, who is the team lead for NCBI Taxonomy, I would learn something new about how these databases work. It was a really awesome project to be involved in.
17% of all of my work-time in 2023 was focussed on grant research, writing, and submission. Like last year, I submitted a total of eight grants this year, but this year they included some major applications, including a large infrastructure grant and two Starting Grants (DFF Sapere Aude and ERC Starting Grant). Although my 2022 DFF Project 1 grant was sadly rejected, the success rate for 2023 has been otherwise tolerably high. I received funding from the Systematics Association, the 15 Juni Fonden, and the Bøje Benzon Foundation. Sadly the two Carlsberg Infrastructure grants were rejected earlier this month. The Starting Grants are still awaiting decision, and I anticipate that this will come only in a few months’ time. I have been aspiring to put in a Starting Grant application for several years now, so I am particularly happy and proud that I managed to submit these.
The Scherz Lab
My lab has continued to grow in 2023. Three Bachelor’s students wrapped up their projects: Clara Keusgen completed her project on Anodonthyla, Joris Fleck completed his work on Stumpffia, and Martina Badia Cardet came from the University of Barcelona for an Erasmus+ Bachelor’s thesis project, which was on agamid morphological diversity and structural niches. Desiree Schumann has continued to work on frog skeletal anatomy. My Master’s student Collin Bos finished his project on mitochondrial genome evolution in cophyline microhylid frogs. Several of these projects are now in being worked up into publications as well, which is very gratifying. Christian Thrane has joined the lab as a Bachelor’s student currently working on a project outside the course curriculum, and is working on toads of the genus Nectophrynoides. Ade Prasetyo Agung continued his PhD work looking at diversity and diversification of Hemiphyllodactylus, and we just got back critical genomic data, which is exciting. The lab is also set for strong growth in 2024: I already have five more students lined up to start working on a variety of projects. It’s going to be a busy year!
The cophyline microhylid frog museomics project remains my lab’s chief focus, and my postdoc, Alice Petzold, has been working hard to keep it moving forward. Alice and I were able to visit London in April on our DiSSCo Synthesys+ grants, where we had a wonderful time working on their collection of cophyline microhylids, and meeting with some excellent colleagues. The project had some big breakthroughs this year, with our hybrid enrichment dataset finally coming through, and are working on getting it all analysed and papers together from it. So I think we will be seeing some great outputs from this project in 2024.
The Herpetology Collection
2023 saw the completion of the frog rearrangement project—a really big achievement for my collection. We also made the same improvements to the skink collection, which was previously almost impossible to navigate because the genus-level taxonomy was badly out of date. Now we also have much more space for the skinks, which will be important as we start to inventory some of the uninventoried reptile specimens we have. This is the first step towards a larger overhaul of the reptiles, which has to be done piecemeal because of the tight space and complex current arrangement on the shelves.
These rearrangements were made possible by volunteers in the collection. Thanks to contact with students in one of my courses, I was able to secure five student volunteers, who come once a week for roughly four hours at a time. Although some did help with these rearrangements, most effort this year has gone into inventorying specimens, and altogether the team (volunteers, myself, and Daniel K. Johansson, the collections manager) managed to get >1000 specimens inventoried in 2023 (compared to 16 specimens we inventoried in 2022!).
The best news for the collection was the success of our 15 Juni Fonden grant application; we have been given the money to hire a two-year collections digitisation assistant, who will help to manage our growing team of volunteers, and tackle some of the other collections-related tasks we are struggling with at the moment. We are in the process of hiring that person now, and I am really excited to have a new team-member starting in early 2024!
Simon Loader (right) and BSc student Christian Thrane (left) comparing measurement schemes for Nectophrynoides toads
Another highlight of the year was a Bøje Benzon Fonds-funded visit by Simon Loader, Curator in Charge of Vertebrates at the Natural History Museum (London), and an expert on the amphibians of Tanzania. Simon was able to help us identify dozens of specimens in the collection, including one superhuman last-minute effort that had him identify >100 specimens in less than 90 minutes. He was also able to collect some data for some of his ongoing projects, and we were able to talk about some future plans for collaboration—a very productive visit.
Teaching and Training
I spent much of this year on two courses: University Paedagogy, and Leading Research. These were surprisingly time-consuming, but on the whole it was time well spent—not just because it of course helps me to develop professionally, but also because this training adds towards the dossier that I will bring for my tenure in the coming years. Some parts of both courses were quite far outside my comfort zone, but I had a good time on both, especially meeting colleagues from different faculties, which is otherwise very hard at university.
I also did quite a bit of teaching this year. Nothing was quite as intense as my teaching in Tanzania in 2022, but I did have a much more significant role than in the previous year in the Herpetology and Animal Morphology courses, as well as participating in a couple other courses. This was pretty enjoyable, though very time-consuming to prep for because of my ongoing paedagogical development. I am looking forward to future years not taking as much prep time, now that the groundwork is laid.
Outreach
I spent much of 2023 still in shock over the loss of twitter as a useable scientific communication platform. I now rarely visit twitter, and have posted only a handful of times in 2023. I joined Threads as soon as it became legal in the EU, but I find it unusable. With some hope, I joined Bluesky, and there I am slowly building up energy again, but it is not the same as twitter was. Fortunately, thanks to a viral post that I can take basically zero credit for, my follower count on tumblr skyrocketed, from just 8000 at the end of 2022 to >38,000 at the end of 2023. Demographic differences in user base, as well as format differences, mean that the content I post on these different platforms differs quite strongly, but I am finding Tumblr almost as enjoyable to use as it was back in 2013.
I was unfortunately not able to revive The SquaMates Podcast in 2023, but we are optimistic about getting things going in 2024 again. AnatomyInsights also had a slow year, but we will be back in 2024 with that as well. I did have a few guest appearances on Bill Strand’s Chameleon Academy (e.g. one talking about the Calumma brevicorne species group), and managed to get one TikTok posted, but it wasn’t much. I also took part in a public crocodile dissection at a science festival, which was good fun.
Personal
On a personal note, this year started with my son taking his first steps, and starting at daycare. Regrettably, this meant that we were subjected to a wide new diversity of viruses and other infectious agents. I think I caught Covid twice this year (the latest over Christmas, foiling most of our plans), but those were just two of the fifteen respiratory infections (colds, flus, covids) I had throughout the year (this is not an exaggeration; it might be an underestimate, actually). Fortunately, there were many other highlights from the year that largely overshadow the illnesses—like visiting friends in Berlin and Braunschweig with my family; and especially seeing my son catch his first lizards in Fuertaventura. He clearly loves animals as much as his parents, and that is a real joy for us to see and encourage.
In summary, it’s been a crazy year; markedly different than any before, for me. I am very interested to see how 2024 shapes up.
For previous years in review, click here: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016