Dr. Mason's website

[guidofatherof5]

Sorry. I feel dirty for lowering the tone of a good academic thread.

There is hope for you yet.

[ConcinusMan]

I've been talking to / corresponding with Mr. Mason periodically over past couple of years. I posted some of our emails in other parts of the forum although I do not recall where those are. I last talked to him in December 2011 and he had planned to send some of his students to check out the den where I filmed these videos. He wanted to go there himself but he's busy working at the dens in Canada during the active season for the next few years.





Anyway, he seemed darned determined to isolate and synthesize the sex pheromones for T. ordinoides but he's also working on doing that with T. radix. Maybe you should shoot him an email, Steve. He says it takes a lot of snakes and finding enough in one place, at once, at the right time of year is difficult. I've also talked to Emily Uhrig (graduate student and Ph.D. Candidate) quite a bit and had some very stimulating and lengthy conversations about garter snakes. I consider it an honor to have these two asking me questions about our local snakes. Actually looking to me, for information and showing sincere interest in what I have to say and what I have observed in the field.

So it's been a while since I visited his website and I'm pretty sure that this is new:

"

1. The role of the Harderian gland in the chemical ecology of garter snakes We have recently discovered that the Harderian gland (HG), the largest cephalic gland in garter snakes, plays a critical role in the transfer of chemical signals (female pheromones, feeding cues) to the chemosensory epithelium of the vomeronasal organ (VNO). Male garter snakes who have had their HGs removed fail to court females and exhibit no response to female pheromone. The HG ducts to the VNO and thus bathes the VNO epithelium with secretions. We have strong evidence that these HG secretions contain compounds that play perireceptor roles in the snake chemosensory system by enabling the pheromone to travel to the VNO. Sarah Moore, a Ph.D. student in the lab, is studying these putative binding proteins.

Study Species | Mason Lab