The herpetological collection at the Burke Museum contains 4,200 specimens of amphibians and reptiles, primarily from the Pacific Northwest; it is particularly strong in amphibians and garter snakes from this area.
The more than 2,200 specimens in the cataloged collection are mostly forest-dwelling amphibians from Western Washington obtained during wildlife studies in the 1980s and early 1990s. About half the uncataloged material is garter snakes collected by William Hebard during the mid-1900s. The collection consists largely of alcohol-reserved specimens with a small number of photographs and skeletons.
The Burke Museum Herpetological Collection was established in 1984 by Dr. Keith Aubry with ca. 1,000 amphibian specimens collected in Douglas-fir forests of western Washington under the auspices of the U.S. Forest Service's Old Growth Forest Wildlife Habitat Research Program. The collection also adopted many specimens left at the University of Washington that date from earlier in the 20th century, including material acquired by William Hebard, Eric Pianka, Richard Snyder, and Arthur Svihla. Some material, including the early Pianka collection, was transferred to other museums.
Dr. Aubry served as Affiliate Curator of the collection for 20 years, while maintaining a full-time research position at the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station in Olympia, Washington. Dr. Aubry began the computerized specimen catalog, developed a collection manual, and facilitated additional specimen acquisitions from other large-scale research programs conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1999, Dr. Brad Moon, then a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington, became a Curatorial Associate and took over many of the curatorial duties, but Dr. Aubry remained Affiliate Curator. During his tenure, Dr. Moon developed a Web site that included an overview and brief history of the collection, a list of publications based on specimens in the collection, and species accounts of Washington amphibians and reptiles.
In 2002, Dr. Marc Hayes began to assume curatorial responsibilities after Dr. Moon left for a faculty position in Louisiana. Since 2002, Drs. Aubry and Hayes have been updating the catalog. In 2004, Dr. Hayes replaced Dr. Aubry as Affiliate Curator, and the collection was moved into a new location within the museum. Currently (2004), web access to the catalog is being developed, and species accounts for the amphibians and reptiles of Washington on the Web site are being updated and expanded.
In 2010, Dr. Adam Leaché joined the Burke Museum as Curator of Genetic Resources and Herpetology.