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Repetek Desert Research Center?
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by pnwherper on May 20, 2005
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I was looking on the lonely planet website and found the Repetek Desert Research Center. A the center focusses on herps and inverts. Was hoping some one could tell me more.
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RE: Repetek Desert Research Center?
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by mampam on June 17, 2005
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I worked at Repetek from 1989 to 1991. It is in the Kara Khum desrt of Turkmenistan close to the Kopet Dag mountains and the northern border of Iran. It's a sandy dsert with lots of saxual bushes and pistachio trees and baking temperatures in summer (50+oC) down to -30oC in winter. As far as I could make out reptile activity was restricted to late March early May and sometimes September as well, the rest of the time everything is deep underground. The venomous reptiles there are Echis, Vipera lebertina and Naja oxiana. The snake scientist there was the legendary Victor Makayev (although I dont know if he is at all famous outside the Russian speaking world, he should be)and me and him would often go chasing vipers. Horsefield's tortoise used to be very common there and I think it might be only in that desert where the males are very much smaller than the females, a consequence, I presume, of the very short activity season. It was interesting that those little males ran huge risks of falling off females and landing on their backs, and in the breeding season, when the desert is full of flowers, I'd often find them struggling uselessly. The biologists considered it natural selection and said I shouldn't help them, but that wasnt really an option. Today Turkmenistan doesnt have a very good reputation although I am sure that anybody who made it out into the Karakhumy would get a very welcome reception from the people who live there. Repetek was maintained financially by the USSR when I was there and I would be very surprised if the nature reserve and research stations are the hives of activity they used to be. I actually found your post doing a google search for repetek because I havent heard anything about it for more than a decade. This post came up first which doesnt bode well...
All the best
Daniel
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