The Schwartz-Zug Expedition to Cuba in 1958

George Zug’s machete from one of his undergraduate collecting expeditions to Cuba (June-August 1958) where he accompanied his mentor, Dr. Albert (Al) Schwartz.

In the summer of 1958, Albright College in southeastern Pennsylvania concluded its spring semester. Upon the end of classes, in early June, herpetologist Al Schwartz and his then undergraduate mentee and student—George R. Zug—began the long drive south from Reading, PA to the Florida Keys. In Key West, Schwartz and Zug (now Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History) boarded a car ferry headed for Havana, Cuba. The two were preparing for an expedition lasting more than two months collecting amphibians and reptiles across the western half of the country.

Cyclura nubila nubila from Cayo Largo, Cuba.

After setting up in Havana, Al and George ferried to Isla de la Juventud (formerly Isla de Piños), Cuba’s largest island outside the mainland, where they spent nearly 20 days on the northern half of the island surveying the local herpetofauna. The southern third of the island was inaccessible by car at the time owing to dense swamp, thus leaving a short flight as the only viable option. Al’s dread for flying made traveling to this southern region unappealing, but George, with convincing argument and promise of plentiful reptiles, successfully persuaded Al to board. The two then rented a boat in order to access a handful of remote islands off the southeastern coast, where they would collect a series of Cyclura nubila nubila, which were subsequently deposited at the American Museum of Natural History, along with many other specimens found. Other notable squamates collected included a new subspecies of Tropidophis, T. melanurus ericksoni (Schwartz and Thomas, 1960), which remains known only from Isla de la Juventud.

Cuban Side-blotched Curlytail (Leiocephalus macropus).

In mid-July, the two returned to mainland Cuba and traveled to a farmer friend’s residence in Santa Clara Province, but were quickly advised to get back into their silver van and return to Havana as a militant outpost was reportedly not far at the time. Their remaining days in Cuba were spent in Pinar del Río Province, which yielded many more new exciting contributions to the herpetofaunal diversity of Cuba, such as Tropidophis melanurus dysodes (Schwartz and Thomas, 1960), three new Leiocephalus subspecies (Zug, 1959), and Eleutherodactylus klinikowskii (Schwartz, 1959).

I thank George R. Zug for discussion of the expedition and the research derived from it.

Schwartz, A. 1959. The status of Eleutherodactylus pinarensis and a new species of the genus from western Cuba. Herpetologica 15: 61–69.

Schwartz, A., and Thomas, R. 1960. Four new snakes (Tropidophis, Dromicus, Alsophis) from the Isla de Pinos and Cuba. Herpetologica 16(2): 73-90.

Zug, G. R. 1959. Three new subspecies of the lizard Leiocephalus macropus Cope from Cuba. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 72: 139–150.