Rubber boa (Charina bobttae) COSEWIC assessment and status report: chapter 15

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The Author

Robert St. Clair: For my Master’s Degree at the University of Victoria under P.T. Gregory, I studied the population ecology of painted turtles in eastern B.C. During this study, I became interested in the physiological costs incurred by northern turtles when they hibernate under ice. I continued this interest in physiological ecology when I did my doctorate under V.H. Hutchinson at the University of Oklahoma. There, I studied differences in growth and metabolic rate when box turtle eggs are incubated at different temperatures. Because the box turtle has environmental sex determination, these differences are also differences between the sexes. As a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Victoria, I began to study habitat preferences of Rubber Boas in Creston, B.C. This study continues at a reduced level. In addition to this, I teach at the University of Alberta on a contract basis. I have published on growth and maturation in painted turtles and box turtles, physiological costs of hibernation in painted turtles, patterns of paternity and male parental care in birds, and, with Colleen Cassady St. Clair, patterns of egg loss in crested Penguins.

Melissa Cameron: From September 2001 to May 2002 I worked for Ron Brooks, co-chair of the Reptiles and Amphibians Species Specialist Group for COSEWIC, as an editor of numerous reptile species status reports. I am currently studying the demographics and long-term viability of a population of wood turtles, Clemmys insculpta, in southern Ontario, as well as developmental strategies and reproductive energetics of three mud turtle (genus Kinosternon) species in Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.