All rights reserved. Much of my early work was designed to better understand the processes of vertebrate speciation and involved genetic interactions between closely related species pairs in hybrid zones using members of the Rana pipiens complex. My efforts and those of Murray Littlejohn at the University of Melbourne, Jack Mecham at Texas Tech, Lauren Brown at Illinois State University and David Pettus at Colorado State overturned the prevailing conclusion that Rana pipiens , as the range was depicted in the 1950's, was a single, widespread polytopic species and established it instead as a complex of species. Currently seven have been described. For the past nine years, I have been investigating biological questions involving the leopard frog, Rana subaquavocalis , native to southeastern Arizona.
Work now extends to life history questions and conservation issues.
Conlon, J.M., White, A.M. and Platz, J.E. 2000. Goraya, J., Wang, Y., Li, Z., O'Flaherty, M., Knoop, F.C., Platz, J.E. and Conlon, J.M. 2000. Peptides with antimicrobial activity from four different families isolated from the skins of the North American frogs, Rana luteiventris , Rana berlandieri and Rana pipiens . J. Michael Conlon, James E. Platz, Nicolas Chartrel, Hubert Vaudry and Per F. Nielsen 1998. Amino acid sequence diversity of pancreatic polypeptide among the amphibia.