Savannah River Ecology Lab, South Carolina: Summer 2002 and 2006
The SREL is located on the Savannah River Site, the largest public (though restricted access) site in the eastern U.S. In 2002 I came here to become a herpetologist, as so many others have (most under Whit Gibbons, final photo; in my case also with Chris Winne and Bob Reed, penultimate photo). The summer was incredible, and this is where I really learned to be a field biologist and specifically find, collect, and study amphibians and reptiles (see Moen et al. 2005). I returned in 2006 to do pilot work on a potential dissertation project that never panned out.