Rodeo, NM --  The world's leading experts on pitviper snakes and their venom will meet for their fourth conference from Wednesday through Saturday, July 13-16, 2022, at Chiricahua Desert Museum's new Geronimo Event Center in Rodeo, New Mexico's remote Bootheel.

Biology of the Pitvipers 4 Conference will feature dozens of talks on scientific advancements in the field of venoms, venomous snakebite treatment, evolution of pitvipers, reproduction, and many more topics.

Chiricahua Desert Museum and the Geronimo Event Center are state-of-the-art facilities at the base of the Chiricahua range. It features a botanical garden, live rattlesnake exhibits, a large conference center, priceless Native American artifacts, an art gallery and gift shop. The facility also includes a scientific and historical press focused on books with a biological and regional emphasis.

The keynote will be delivered by Dr. Anita Malhotra, a UK-based expert on Asian pitvipers, who is dedicated to improving the snakebite situation in India, her home country. She is a molecular geneticist, evolutionary biologist and herpetologist who has worked all over Asia on elucidating the evolutionary relationship, species boundaries and distributions of pitvipers, venomous snakes that cause the majority of bites in many countries.

Dr. Juan J. Calvete, the plenary speaker, is a Spanish researcher whose lab has concentrated on structural and functional proteomics of snake venoms. They have developed proteomic tools ("venomics" and "antivenomics") for exploring the evolution, composition, and biotechnological applications of venoms and toxins.

The banquet speaker, Dr. Joseph R. Mendelson III, is the Research Director of Zoo Atlanta in Georgia. One of the nation’s foremost experts in his field, Dr. Mendelson was among the first responders to the crisis of global amphibian decline and is responsible for the naming of more than 40 new amphibian and reptile species. He is past president of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, the world’s largest academic herpetological society, and is an Adjunct Professor of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech University, where he teaches and supervises student research. Dr. Mendelson has published more than 125 peer-reviewed technical articles.

Both Dr. Richard Straight and Dr. William S. Brown are the honored guests at the conference. Dr. Straight is a world authority on snake venoms and antivenoms, with emphasis on New World pitvipers. Dr. Brown has been conducting an ecological study of the timber rattlesnake in New York for more than 40 years.

The conference is organized and hosted by Gordon W. Schuett, Bob Ashley and Sheri Ashley of the Chiricahua Desert Museum.

For more information about the conference and venue, visit www.geronimoevent.com and
www.biologyofthepitvipers.com.