Jennifer B. Pramuk, Ph.D.

Director of Herpetology, Wildlife Conservation Society;
Columbia University Department of Ecology & Environmental Biology

As Director of Herpetology at the Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo, Jennifer Pramuk oversees a diverse collection of over 800 reptiles and amphibians from around the world. She is responsible for the care of animals – many threatened or endangered – at the Zoo's historic World of Reptiles, the only building still in its original use from the day the Zoo opened its doors on November 8, 1898. Pramuk also oversees care for animals at the Zoo's award-winning JungleWorld and Congo Gorilla Forest exhibits. She is responsible for more than 1040 specimens of 143 species, ranging from giant false gharials to tiny Kinhasi spray toads, highly endangered amphibians about the size of a nickel.

Building on her love of toads and frogs, first developed as a child, Pramuk began her career with animals volunteering first as a zookeeper at Akron Zoo in Ohio and later at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a zookeeper in the Reptile House of the Audubon Zoological Park and Gardens, New Orleans. She has also worked as a scientific illustrator, curatorial assistant, college instructor, and laboratory manager.

Pramuk has been widely published in herpetological journals and has appeared as an invited speaker at seminars around the world. Most recently, she spoke in March 2006 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on "The 'rediscovery' and utilization of disparate types of data to infer evolutionary histories of amphibians and reptiles." Her extensive field research has taken her to Costa Rica, French Guiana, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, and most recently, Tanzania where she studied reptiles and amphibians.

Her fieldwork has led to descriptions of new species of frogs and toads (21 species to date). In the future, she plans to continue to develop her work documenting diversity of amphibians and reptiles in Latin America where amphibians in particular are experiencing unprecedented declines. Her work at the Bronx Zoo will focus on the captive breeding of flagship species of endangered and threatened species of frogs.

Pramuk currently serves on the steering committee of the AZA Amphibian TAG, the Board of Governors for the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, and as a referee on several professional publications.

A native of Akron, Ohio, Pramuk received her B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she was an honors student. Her M.A. and Ph.D. were both awarded with honors by the University of Kansas Lawrence. Post-doctoral research was at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, where she studied evolutionary relationships of night lizards.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

UK, J. B., T. ROBERTSON, J. SITES, B. NOONAN. 2008. Around the world in 10 million years: biogeography of the nearly cosmopolitan true toads (Anura: Bufonidae). 17:72–83. Global Ecology and Biogeography.

LEHR, E., J. B. PRAMUK, S. B. HEDGES, J. H. CORDOVA. 2007. A new species of arboreal Rhinella (Anura: Bufonidae) from Yanachaga-Chemillén National Park In central Peru. 1662:1–14. Zootaxa.

CHAPARRO, J. C., J. PRAMUK, and A. GLUESENKAMP. 2007. A new species of arboreal Rhinella (Anura: Bufonidae) from cloud forest of southeastern Peru. 63:203–212. Herpetologica.

PRAMUK, J., et al. 2006. Phylogeny of finescale shiners of the genus Lythrurus (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae) inferred from four mitochondrial genes. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 42:287–297.

PRAMUK, J. 2006. Phylogeny of South American Bufo (Anura: Bufonidae) inferred from combined evidence. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 146:407–452.

PRAMUK, J. AND E. LEHR. 2005. Taxonomic status of Atelophryniscus chrysophorus (Anura: Bufonidae) inferred from phylogeny. Journal of Herpetology. 39:610–618.

LEHR, E., J. PRAMUK, AND M. LUNDBERG. 2005. A new species of Bufo from Andean Peru (Anura: Bufonidae). Herpetologica. 61:308–318.

PRAMUK, J. AND J. R. MENDELSON III. 2003. Anaxyrus melancholicus Tschudi: synonym of the Mexican taxon Bufo compactilis Wiegmann (Anura: Bufonidae). Southwestern Naturalist. 48:676–680.

PRAMUK, J. B. AND H. ALAMILLO. 2003. An effective technique for collecting Amphisbaena mertensi with notes on its natural history. Herpetological Review. 34:221–223.

PRAMUK, J. AND F. KADIVAR. 2003. A new species of Bufo (Anura: Bufonidae) from southern Ecuador. Herpetologica. 59:270–283.

PRAMUK, J. 2002. Morphological characters and cladistic relationships of West Indian toads (Anura: Bufonidae). Herpetological Monographs 16:121–151.

PRAMUK, J., C. HASS, AND S. HEDGES. 2001. Molecular phylogeny and biogeography of West Indian toads (Anura: Bufonidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 20:294–301.

PRAMUK, J. B. 2000. Prenasal bones and snout morphology in West Indian bufonids and the Bufo granulosus species Group. Journal of Herpetology 2:334–340.

RON, S. AND J. PRAMUK. 1999. A new species of Osteocephalus (Anura: Hylidae) from Amazonian Ecuador and Peru. Herpetologica 55:433–446.

DUELLMAN, W. E., AND J. PRAMUK. 1999. Frogs of the genus Eleutherodactylus (Anura: Leptodactylidae) in the Andes of northern Peru. Scientific Papers of the Natural History Museum of The University of Kansas 13:178.

PRAMUK, J. AND I. HILER. 1998. An investigation into the obligate oophagy of Dendrobates pumilio tadpoles (Anura: Dendrobatidae). Herpetological Review 30:219–221.

PRAMUK, J. AND L. FOX. 1998. The life history and larval development of the endoparasitoid Patricloides montanus Cresson. (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae). The Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 71:44–50.

MENDELSON, J. R. III, AND J. PRAMUK. 1997. Neopalatine odontoids in Bufo alvarius (Anura: Bufonidae). Journal of Herpetology 4:586–588.

ACADEMIC HONORS:

2004: The Herpetologists’ League Robert G. Jaeger Award for Graduate Student Research.
2004: Honors for dissertation: Systematics of South American Bufo (Anura: Bufonidae).

2003: Kenneth B. Armitage Award for Excellence in Teaching.

1999: Honors for Masters thesis: Systematics of West Indian toads (Anura: Bufonidae).

SELECTED ORAL PRESENTATIONS:

2006. The American Museum of Natural History. The "rediscovery" and utilization of disparate types of data to infer evolutionary histories of amphibians and reptiles. New York, NY.

2005. PRAMUK, J.B., K. DE QUEIROZ, R. L. BEZY, AND J.W. SITES. Phylogenetic relationships within Xantusiidae: using trees to address evolutionary questions at multiple levels. Fifth World Congress of Herpetology, Stellenbosch, South Africa.

2004. PRAMUK, J. B. Phylogenetic relationships of South American Bufo (Anura: Bufonidae). Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and...