Powdermill Lecture Series: Dr. Walter Meshaka

Join us for a riveting lecture series with the scientists of the Powdermill Nature Reserve, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s environmental research center. Each month, we will have an expert in their field visit the library to tell us about their research.  

May’s lecture will be with Dr. Walter Meshaka

The Eastern Box Turtle and Wood Turtle both occur on the Powdermill Nature Reserve. Dr. M. Graham Netting, Director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and responsible for initial acquisition of the station property in 1956, began individually marking these species with the goal of longterm demographic research. Through 2019 we examined growth and survivorship of these two species and present our findings of how these two species have fared over the intervening 60 years.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Walter E. Meshaka, Jr., of the State Museum of Pennsylvania, in Harrisburg has, with the kind support of Powdermill staff since 2002, undertaken research projects in the ecology of amphibians and reptiles at the station that have involved museum specimens and mark-recapture of individuals. Prior to his arrival to Harrisburg in 2000, Dr. Meshaka was Supervisory Curator of the cultural and natural history collections of the four national parks in southern Florida.