Don Lyman

Boston

Science Writer at Freelance

freelance science writer, biologist, hospital pharmacist, singer-songwriter

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Articles

The Bog in Winter

2 months ago | loe.org | Don Lyman

Air Date: Week of Just under the ice at Pine Hole Bog north of Boston, diverse forms of life from dragonfly nymphs to turtles and frogs await the spring thaw. Living on Earth’s Don Lyman shares a reflection from a winter walk through this beloved place. Transcript CURWOOD: The days may be getting longer but winter still has its grip firmly on us here in the Northern Hemisphere.
Swamp Snakes and Scorpions

2 months ago | earthisland.org | Don Lyman

The utility and adventure of biodiversity surveys. ON A WARM SPRING morning in 2002 I pulled into a parking lot next to a swampy area in the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in Jacksonville, Florida. Cameron Young, a 20-something graduate student in the ecology program at the University of Georgia, was leaning against his car. “I almost didn’t wait for you before I checked the traps,” Young said with a Southern drawl.
How Two Close Encounters with Copperheads Changed Don Lyman

2 months ago | thexylom.com | Don Lyman

On a warm spring day in 1967, I was running down a dirt path during a sixth-grade field trip in northern Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park, when I first came across a large venomous copperhead snake. Dappled sunlight filtered through the canopy of pines, oaks, and tulip trees, and fell in bright patches on the trail. In one of those sunlit patches the copperhead lay, and I failed to notice it until I almost stepped on it.
A science teacher gets a lifeline from a former student

Jan 10, 2025 | bostonglobe.com | Don Lyman

Tim and I first met on a biology trip to Belize in 2000 when he was a young student at Merrimack College in North Andover, where I teach biology part time as an adjunct instructor. He quickly latched onto my interest in herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians). Now in his mid-40s, he is an accomplished herpetologist in his own right.
Perspective: These specimen jars aren't too jarring

Oct 19, 2024 | thexylom.com | Don Lyman

In the spring of 2010, my job was to sort hundreds of dead anolis lizard specimens at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. For several weeks, I stared at several gallon jars full of hundreds of these lizards preserved in alcohol, sorting these specimens, one lizard at a time, by species and the location where they had been collected.
I save frogs from being eaten by snakes, but should I?

Jun 5, 2024 | bostonglobe.com | Don Lyman

While walking through the woods on a summer day a few years ago, I heard a high-pitched scream. I knew at once what it was — a garter snake had caught a wood frog. I followed the sound to its source, where I discovered a three-inch frog halfway down the throat of a two-foot-long garter snake. The frog’s front legs and head were sticking out of the snake’s mouth, and the frog was screaming every few seconds.
Some wild misadventures of a college biology instructor

Jan 5, 2024 | bostonglobe.com | Don Lyman

As a biologist and adjunct instructor at Merrimack College in North Andover, I’ve had the opportunity to share my passion for biology with students and others and to travel on numerous field trips. Whether close to campus or in faraway exotic places like Belize or the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, field experiences are a great learning opportunity for students and teachers alike. But with science, as with any human endeavor, sometimes things don’t quite go as planned.
How winter can be for the birds

Dec 8, 2023 | bostonglobe.com | Don Lyman

As we move into winter, some people put bird feeders in their yards to supplement our avian neighbors’ food supply. Some birds are common feeder visitors, while others are conspicuous by their absence, having migrated to warmer areas like the Southern United States, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.
Heavy rain may have kept mosquito-borne illnesses at bay

Nov 10, 2023 | bostonglobe.com | Don Lyman

Despite a rainy summer that produced lots of standing water where mosquitoes breed, there were not many cases of Massachusetts’ two most notorious mosquito-borne diseases: eastern equine encephalitis and West Nile virus. While this is good news, it seems counterintuitive. More rain should equal more mosquitoes, which could equal more EEE and WNV, but there were no human cases of EEE this season and only six of WNV.
Look for these wild plants that eat bugs

Oct 27, 2023 | bostonglobe.com | Don Lyman

When I teach ecology labs at Merrimack College, one of my favorite places to take students is the Pine Hole Bog in Andover’s Charles W. Ward Reservation. While walking along the quarter-mile boardwalk that traverses this fascinating wetland, I point out the many interesting plants that grow in the bog — wild cranberries, horsetails, poison sumac, sphagnum moss, swamp loosestrife, and others.