Chapter 1, The Reptilian Spectacle - UWSpace - University of ...

Acknowledgements
But for the need for brevity, this section risked dwarfing all others, so I beg forgiveness from all those
who deserve far more heaping praise than I can offer them on these pages. Research cannot flourish in
a vacuum and many hands and minds beyond my own contributed to this work, directly and indirectly.
Infinite thanks are due to supervisor/facilitator/cheerleader Prof. Jake Sivak, and I am indebted as well
to my advisors Drs. Tom Singer, Matt Vijayan and Jeff Hovis for their helpful suggestions at all stages.
Thanks to Profs. Ralph Chou & Trefford Simpson who provided invaluable insight and suggestions on
carrying out spectrophotometric measurements and intraocular imaging respectively. A great many
thanks to Miriam Heynen and Elizabeth Martell, both of whom are always willing to share their
bountiful knowledge of biochemistry and their technical mastery, and thanks as well to Dr. Lyndon
Jones for allowing the use of all the equipment in his lab. Thanks to Dr. Vivian Choh and Gah-Jone
Won for valuable discussions, for sharing their knowhow on lab techniques and for the use of lab
supplies. My gratitude extends as well to Brian Chow and Raymond Ho for their advice on running
gels both 1-D and 2-D and to Dr. Brendan McConkey for the use of the IEF system. Many thanks to
and due recognition of Drs. Simone Schneider and Jyotsna Maram for their expert assistance with
capturing in vivo confocal microscopy images. Vielen dank Dr. Marc Schulze und Alex Müntz for
translating some German articles and to Peter Stirling and Kathy MacDonald for help in tracking down
those and other historical articles. I am grateful to Robin Jones for assisting with the design and
building of custom equipment and to Nancy Gibson who helped with housing and caring for the snakes
and geckos and for sharing her remarkable insight into animal behaviour. This work depended greatly
on the kind donations of shed snake skins from several sources. I would like to extend my gratitude to
Rob Caza for sending sheds from his personal collection, to Bry Loyst and the Indian River Reptile
Zoo in Indian River, Ontario, for generous donations of a diverse array of shed snake skins, and to
Little Ray’s Reptile Zoo in Ottawa, Ontario, for collecting and sending many sheds from their
collection. I am indebted to Drs. Roger Sawyer and Matthew Greenwold of the University of South
Carolina for the generous gift of ß keratin antibodies without which a significant portion of this work
would not have been possible. Reproductions of historical images are courtesy of the Biodiversity
iv