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[reptilesDownUnder]

Originally Posted by smith84

once you become a herp, what type of employment oppertunities are there?

Bugger all. Instead of calling yourself a herpetologist, you'd probably be better off calling yourself a physiologist/ecologist/whatever. You can still use reptiles/amphibians as your study animals, but you're more employable if you sound like you have a wider field of expertise.

Originally Posted by smith84

are these research projects a paid activity or do most herps rely on another job or snake breeding as a source of income?

If you're an academic or a research scientist (working at a university, in a government department or for a charity) you will have a salary. You will get paid to study reptiles. This would make you a professional herpetologist.

Keep in mind that a herpetologist is someone who studies reptiles/amphibians. To me, that means you carry out original research and publish your findings for the wider scientific community to view. Keeping reptiles in captivity doesn't make you a herpetologist. If you studied your captive animals and published your findings, that would make you a herpetologist. If you don't make money from your research you'd probably be classed as an 'amateur herpetologist'. That's a phrase that's used a lot, and it's by no means meant to be derogatory. 'Amateur herpetologists' have made an enormous contribution to herpetology in Australia. Of course there are also the amateur herpetologists who have damaged herpetology by 'publishing' (in the loosest sense of the word) very poor taxonomic revisions of a number of groups of reptiles. I won't go into details here...

Publishing (to me, and most other scientists) means submitting articles to a respected journal where other herpetologists/scientists will review your methods and findings and give you feedback on them. Once everyone's happy with the article, the journal will publish it. This (as Lozza says) is called 'peer review', and is the backbone of science. It helps to reduce (but unfortunately will never completely eliminate) the number of dodgy research articles out there.

Becoming a research scientist is a lot of hard work (and there are many other - potentially easier - ways to earn a living with reptiles), but it is no doubt a very rewarding career.


Stewart