It is around the time of year where blogs tend to publish reviews of their posts of the previous year, and academics think back to their achievements of the past year, so I want to take an opportunity to do both here. My last ‘year in review’ was actually midway […]
This week, we published something a little different than our typical taxonomic output. Roughly three years ago, my friend, fellow PhD student David Prötzel, discovered a fascinating phenomenon in chameleons: shining a UV torch on them made patterns of fluorescence appear on their heads and in some species across their […]
After two months in the forest, fieldwork in Montagne d’Ambre has now drawn to a close. On the 6th of December, we exited the forest in some haste (for reasons that will become apparent below), and over the next few weeks we will be working on getting permits and transportation […]
My team and I have been on Montagne d’Ambre in northern Madagascar since the eleventh of November. At this point we are roughly three fifths through the fieldwork, and two members of the team and I have come out of the field to Antsiranana, the largest city in northern Madagascar, […]
Two years ago, I travelled with a team of international and Malagasy researchers to a remote forest in the north of Madagascar, on ‘Expedition Angano.’ The goal of the expedition was to study forest fragmentation and its impact on reptile and amphibian biodiversity and distribution, as well as to identify […]
The time has come for a new adventure. Over the last year and a half, I have been preparing for an expedition to the Montagne d’Ambre (English: Amber Mountain) in northern Madagascar. The aim of the project: to conduct the field research that will be central in my PhD research, […]
I am pleased to announce that my colleagues and I have just described a new species of chameleon, Calumma gehringi, from northern Madagascar, published today (13 October 2017) in the Open Access journal Vertebrate Zoology! A PDF of the paper can be downloaded by clicking here. This latest paper is an important […]
Today (6 June 2017), my colleagues and I have published a new paper in the journal Zootaxa, entitled ‘A review of the taxonomy and osteology of the Rhombophryne serratopalpebrosa species group (Anura: Microhylidae) from Madagascar, with comments on the value of volume rendering of micro-CT data to taxonomists.’ This is […]
Today (24 February, 2017) Shea M. Lambert, Carl Hutter, and I have published a new species of diamond frog, genus Rhombophryne, in the Open Access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution: meet Rhombophryne nilevina Lambert, Hutter & Scherz, 2017. The story of the discovery of this frog is quite a thrilling one, […]
A paper by my colleagues and me appears today (7 February 2017) in PeerJ, describing a new species of gecko from northern Madagascar with large scales that come off with extreme ease. This is actually a characteristic of the whole genus Geckolepis, to which the new species belongs, and has […]
Marojejy is a rainforest-clad mountain massif in northeastern Madagascar. The park was established in 1952 as a strict nature reserve, but was changed to a national park in 1998[1]. Several notable biological research expeditions have been led to this mountain, the most significant of which was the Goodman expedition in […]
In August, I re-lauched this website after transitioning hosting (having basically lost a year on the blog due to the terrible decision to try freehosting.com. Seriously. Beware.), and gave a review of most of what I’d been up to over the course of that year. It was a tough one. […]
With the rebirth of this website, I wanted to give a little progress report for the last year, and what I am working on at the moment. In October of 2015 I completed my MSc in Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and almost immediately […]
Please be aware that due to hosting problems, I have had to re-build this website from the top. It will be a few days before everything is working again. Thanks for your understanding, Mark D. Scherz
The new and improved www.markscherz.com! After almost a year of sitting idle, I have finally managed to completely overhaul this website. The new site has been re-purposed! This is no longer going to be a dedicated photography blog. Instead, it is the joint home of my research and my photography. […]
