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Department of Biology

College of Arts and Sciences

H. Randall Yoder

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H. Randall Yoder, Professor of Biology

Phone: 409-880-1826

Office: 205-6 Hayes Biology Building

Email: hryoder@lamar.edu

Classes Taught:

  • Parasitology (BIOL 4410)
  • General Biology (BIOL 1406, 1407)
  • Field Parasitology (BIOL 4416/5416)
  • Developmental Biology (BIOL 3420)
  • Introductory Biology for Nonmajors (BIOL1470)
  • Graduate Seminar

Research Interests:

My research interests are in the broad area of parasite ecology. Ecology is the study of interactions of organisms with each other and with their environment. A parasites lives on, or in, a living host during some part of its life. A host, therefore, is both another organism and the parasite’s environment.  Consequently, there are many fascinating ecological questions to be addressed surrounding host-parasite relationships. Both hosts and parasites vary widely in their biological characteristics. Some parasites have complex life cycles involving multiple hosts while others have direct life cycles. In any case, one of the main challenges to success as a parasite is successful transmission of offspring into new hosts. I am interested in how various aspects of host and parasite biology, as well as environmental factors, interact to structure parasite assemblages in host individuals, populations, and communities.  This has led me to work with communities of larval trematodes in freshwater snails and helminth assemblages in amphibians (see publications below). I am currently working on communities of parasitic worm in fishes from backwater habitats along the Neches River Basin in Southeast Texas. These oxbow lakes, and sloughs are quite different ecologically from the northern, glacially formed lakes where much of the research on ecology of fish parasites has been conducted. My current project concentrates, primarily, on parasitic helminth communities from several species of sunfishes in the family Centrarchidae and the spotted gar, Lepisosteus oculatus. I am a member of the graduate faculty and am supportive of undergraduate research in my laboratory. I have also been a mentor in the McNair Scholars program.

Link to Dr. Yoder's Course Materials

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Selected Publications:

Yoder, H. Randall and James R. Coggins.  1996.  Helminth communities in the Northern Spring Peeper, Pseudacris c. crucifer  Wied and the Wood Frog, Rana sylvatica Le Conte from Southeastern Wisconsin. Journal of the Helminthological Society of Washington 63:211-214.

Yoder, H. Randall and James R. Coggins.  1998.  Larval trematode assemblages in the snail Lymnaea stagnalis from Southeastern Wisconsin.  Journal of Parasitology 84: 259-268.

Yoder, H.R., C. Reinbold, and J.R. Coggins. 2001.  Helminth communities in green frogs, Rana clamitans, from southeastern Wisconsin.  Comparative Parasitology, 68: 269-272.

Yoder, H. Randall and Christopher Crabtree. 2005. Parasite assemblages in centrarchid fishes from backwater habitats in Southeast Texas, USA. Texas J. Sci. 57(1): 59-66.

Yoder, H. R. 2005. Review of Esch, G.W., 2004. Parasites, People and Places: Essays on field parasitology. Cambridge Univ. Press. in Ecoscience 12:149.

Jiang, M.J., M.O. Way, R. Yoder, W. Zhang, and J.C. Cheng. 2006. Elytral color dimorphism in rice water weevil (Coleoptera:Curculionidae): Occurrence in spring populations and relationship to female reproductive development. Annals of the Entomological Society of America. 99: 1127-1132.

Yoder, R.H. and G.W. Gomez. 2006. Helminth parasite assemblages in bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) from southeast Texas. Texas J. Sci. 59:33-38.

Yoder, H.R. and J.R. Coggins. 2007. Helminth communities in five species of sympatric amphibians from three adjacent ephemeral ponds in southeastern Wisconsin. Journal of Parasitiology. 93:755-760.

Committee Service:  Pre-professional Advisory Committee