The Herpetology club is being reinstated on Truman’s campus after a several year absence. The club has been restarted by freshmen Bella Cignetti, Emma Crutchfield and Nolan Wilson with the help of Biology professor Chad Montgomery.
Cignetti, Crutchfield and Wilson share a passion for the study of reptiles and amphibians, but don’t necessarily see themselves in a career strictly related to herpetology. The group has come together because of their varied interests in the field.
“Throughout high school, I did habitat restoration and I always wanted to go herping, which is the act of going out and looking for reptiles and amphibians,” Cignetti said. I always wanted to do black lighting for insects, which is where you can go out at night and you set up a tarp with a light and all the insects flock to the tarp.”
Cignetti said that due to where she lives at home and not having a group of people to go with her, she never got to do that before college.
“I never got to do them and no one ever wanted to do them with me, so I got here and I was like okay, there’s got to be something around campus,” Cignetti said.
Cignetti was in Montgomery’s class during the first semester, and asked how she could learn about her interests, and learned that the club had not been on campus for the past four to five years so he encouraged her to start the club herself, Montgomery said.
Wilson said he met Cignetti during Truman Week when they had the opportunity to volunteer in the herpetarium, and Wilson knew Crutchfield before coming to Truman. The group got together and decided to begin the club and still volunteer in the herpetarium together.
Cignetti is pursuing an Environmental Science degree and hopes to study entomology in the future, as she is interested in the relationship between bugs and humans. Wilson is pursuing a Biochemistry degree with a Classics minor and hopes to study the connection between animals and humans.
“What’s interesting to me – I’m not sure what field it is exactly – but I really like looking into how animals can impact human science and health,” Wilson said. “Like how, there’s this protein that a lot of scientists use to track DNA called the GFP protein and we got that from a species of jellyfish. I find that animal-human interaction to be really fascinating and I want to study more.”
Wilson hopes to get an internship at the St. Louis Zoo this summer in the Conservation department.
Crutchfield is pursuing a Classics and Fine Arts degree and plans to be a Latin teacher and do drawings for textbooks. Crutchfield is helping run the media outreach for the club and has a pet lizard at home, sparking her interest in reptiles and amphibians.
Members could expect to attend local conservation areas and state parks, as well as travel throughout the state in order to be able to see a greater diversity of animals. Montgomery said that the northern part of the state does not have a great amount of biodiversity, so they would need to travel near Trenton to see rattlesnakes or southern Missouri to see salamanders. Montgomery also said that he has connections at the St. Louis Zoo and hopes to take students to see the herpetarium there.
The club would participate in BioBlitzes, Cignetti said. This would include students going to these conservation areas and using the app iNaturalist where they would identify different species.
Students interested in herpetology have a variety of options in studying their field.
“People who work in the herpetarium are generally interested in taking care of those animals and many of them are pre-vet and want to work in the zoo field. People that are doing research want to go out to graduate schools and do research there. People that are interested in the herpetology club might have reptiles as pets, they might be interested in going out and finding reptiles in the woods, they might be interested in research, they might be interested in all aspects of that,” Montgomery said.
The Herpetology club expects to grow in numbers in about a month once all of the necessary paperwork is completed.