Lourdes Rodriguez Schettino with Ada Chamizo and Rich Glor in 1999.
Our recent mention of Richard Etheridge’s death reminded us that we’d never noted the passing of Lourdes Rodriguez Schettino nearly two years ago, in March of 2017.
Lourdes was an expert on the lizards of Cuba, particularly the iguanid lizards, about which she truly wrote the book. She also was the lead author on a lovely book on Cuban herpetology (below).
Sadly, I am unaware of any obituaries of Lourdes in English, but the Instituto de Ecología y Sistemática, where she worked for many years, has a nice summary of her life’s work, and there is a brief notice in Revista Colombiana de Ciencia Animal.
Lourdes Rodriguez Schettino in 1995.
Professor of Biology and Director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in Saint Louis. I've spent my entire professional career studying anoles and have discovered that the more I learn about anoles, the more I realize I don't know.
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James (Skip) Lazell
Sadly, I never knew or even met her. I visited Cuba briefly in June, 1957, but was unable to travel around the Island freely. It was in the boil of revolution! It would have to be the anoles of other islands for me…. Skip