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All news related to Robert C. Fleischer
Jul. 24, 2020
For frogs dying of the invasive chytridiomycosis disease, the leading cause of amphibian deaths worldwide, the genes responsible for protecting them may actually be leading to their demise, according...
Jun. 07, 2019
For four years, the Reptile Discovery Center’s Asian water dragon female lived alone. Then, while examining eggs as part of a study, animal keepers made a shocking discovery—one was fertile! How...
Jun. 05, 2019
Life found a way at Smithsonian’s National Zoo, where a female Asian water dragon at the Reptile Discovery Center underwent facultative parthenogenesis—that is, she reproduced and contributed a...
Mar. 05, 2019
Smithsonian scientists and partners believe genetic diversity could hold the key to saving amphibians from Ranavirus, a pathogen that is particularly devastating to frogs and toads in the U.S.
Nov. 30, 2018
The secret to salamanders’ survival may be in their slimy secretions. Scientists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute are swabbing salamanders in Shenandoah, looking for disease-fighting...
Oct. 13, 2017
In 2016, the international import of 201 salamander species into the United States was restricted in an effort to prevent the newly discovered deadly salamander fungal disease, Batrachochytrium...
Jul. 13, 2017
In a shell of a paternity test story, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) scientists found that male desert tortoises that had been relocated from a threatened habitat to a new nearby...
May. 24, 2017
Four years after conservationists relocated 570 desert tortoises in California from a threatened habitat to a nearby location, the tortoises outwardly appeared to have successfully acclimated....
Dec. 23, 2014
For the first time, SCBI geneticists have sequenced the genome of a vertebrate: A Hawaiian honeycreeper