#SnakesAtYourService Blog Carnival - 9th December! - Reptilenesia

Rough Green Snakes (Opheodrys aestivus) mostly eat insects and spiders. Photo by Kevin Durso

Next week, a few herpetology bloggers, including myself, are putting on a blogging carnival to celebrate the Year of the Snake! The theme is going to be ecosystem services of snakes - from the relatively well-studied relationships between snakes and their ecosystems in some parts of North America, to the basically unknown services rendered by snakes in Madagascar and elsewhere.

Social media has become an important tool for conducting effective science education and outreach, and amphibians and reptiles, especially snakes, have much to gain from this kind of positive exposure. Many reptiles and amphibians occur in large numbers, are top predators, and provide important services to their ecosystems. However, these animals are often cryptic, and the general public seems to overlook their presence and great importance. As a result, we have decided to bring attention to a network of students, naturalists, and professionals that use social media to communicate information about amphibian and reptile natural history, science, and conservation.

Our inaugural event is inspired by Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation’s (PARC) Year of the Snake. On December 9th we will be publishing blog posts about the diversity of ecosystem services provided by snakes. Snakes are generally vilified in the popular media. Our goal is to create new media that accurately portrays snakes’ importance in the hopes of decreasing the negative perception many people hold against them. Leading up to this day, we will be tweeting about snake ecosystem services using the hashtag #SnakesAtYourService. We encourage everyone to follow us on Twitter, visit our blogs on December 9th, and help spread the word about our outreach event, which we hope will be the first of many touching on different themes related to the importance of amphibians and reptiles.