**Preface to "Systematics and Conservation of Neotropical Amphibians and Reptiles"**

A full-spread photo of the Amazon forest in a pictorial atlas of the world sparked my imagination as a child and I can still see that image nearly sixty years later. I was lucky to visit the Arroyo Cuchuhaqui, east of Alamos, Sonora, Mexico, as a junior college student on a class fieldtrip. An extensive trip through Mexico in the summer of 1974 took me south of the Tropic of Cancer, and I was hooked. I changed my focus from birds to amphibians and reptiles, and studied aspects of their biology as I completed my undergraduate degree in California. For my Ph.D., I was fortunate enough to join a research laboratory that had a Neotropical focus, and I was able to live my dream. My doctoral advisor, Jay M. Savage, was known for his research in Costa Rica, which focused largely on systematics and biogeography of amphibians and reptiles. During my time in Jay's lab, I was one of three ecologists in a systematics lab, and always appreciated the importance of systematics for my ecological investigations. The papers presented in this volume show how well the two fields come together to generate innovative research programs.

When I started in the field of Neotropical herpetology, most of the papers were single authored, and most of the authors were from the north temperate zone. My doctoral research introduced me to field experiments in Costa Rica. While living on site, Craig Guyer and I encountered new records for the field site, and we learned the importance of documenting records and helped build collections. Specimens held in collections were essential for my research. I dissected hundreds of frogs collected as part of another study to determine the body size of sexual maturity for *Oophag pumili a* before I *o* left to conduct my fieldwork in Costa Rica. My postdoctoral research at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) allowed me to use collections to advance my knowledge of feeding in dendrobatid frogs. I also explored tepuis in Venezuela as part of teams from the AMNH in the early 1990s and helped build museum collections. Museums are the libraries of biodiversity, and the papers in this volume show how critical collections have been in testing hypotheses, providing comparative material to diagnose new diversity, and even providing tissues that help resolve systematic relationships.

The book includes papers that describe the state of the field of Neotropical herpetology as we start the second decade of the new century. Conservation case studies, an exceptional monograph on the glass frogs of Ecuador, and systematic studies will be of interest to a variety of scientists. Two attributes of the papers in the book show how far the field has advanced since I started my studies nearly fifty years ago: most of the papers are authored by Latinx scientists, and all the papers represent collaborations among scientists. Taxa emblematic of the Neotropics: harlequin frogs, pitvipers, dendrobatid poison frogs, glass frogs, gymnopthalmid lizards, anoles, snakes, and the amphibian pathogen *Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis*, are included in the book. The papers focus on organisms from Mexico to Paraguay with a heavy focus on South America.

I found every chapter to be informative because of my long-term interest in the amphibians and reptiles of the Neotropics, and am proud of the editors and all the scientists who have done so much to advance the field. The editors brought together a diverse group of scientists working across the Neotropics on key groups to highlight what we know and what research questions await our attention. I would recommend the book to anyone with interests in Neotropical herpetology or any professor looking for a textbook to help anchor a graduate level course in herpetology or conservation.
