Museum Staff Spotlight: Tom Mann, Zoologist, MS Natural Heritage Program
For 35 years, Tom Mann, Zoologist with the Mississippi Natural Heritage Program, has been on a mission to protect some of Mississippi’s most unique creatures - from salamanders and snakes to tortoises and rare sandhill plants.
Whether he’s rescuing amphibians on a rainy night, tracking endangered species, or mentoring the next generation of biologists, Tom’s passion for conservation runs deep. In this Staff Spotlight, he shares stories from the field, reflections on a lifetime of science and stewardship, and why he believes protecting nature begins with curiosity and care.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU WORKED FOR MDWFP’S MISSISSIPPI MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCE?
I’ve worked for the Museum for 35 years.
WHAT’S YOUR WORKDAY LIKE?
The workday/night varies a lot depending upon the year and season.
Field Surveys 1990s - 2007
If during warm months in the 1990s, I might have been surveying longleaf pine forests on the DeSoto National Forest or Marion Co. WMA for Gopher Tortoises, or the saltmarsh /brackish marshes of the coast for Diamondback Terrapins, Gulf Salt Marsh Snakes, and Alabama Red-bellied Cooters. If in the cooler months, I’d be doing surveys for Webster’s Salamanders or writing reports on research done during the warm months. I did surveys for Inflated Heelsplitter Mussels in oxbows of the MS river in the mid-90s.
Newly transformed Spotted Salamander juveniles in Tom’s hand plucked from harm’s way while crossing the Natchez Trace during the daytime (but it was raining) on a Sunday morning, 19 May 2019.
Bucket Brigade 2006 - Present
Since 2006, cool, wet nights between late September and April have been devoted to bucket brigade amphibian rescues during the annual ‘salamander Serengeti’ at the Natchez Trace near milepost 86 south of I-20 in Clinton, and since 2012, we monitor 100 m drift-fences set up on opposite sides of the Trace at MP 86.15 to intercept Webster’s Salamanders, the migratory behavior of which we (my wife Dr. Debora Mann, Professor Emeritus, Millsaps College) discovered and described.
Field Surveys 2007 - Present
Since 2007, warm month field surveys have been focused upon Florida Harvester Ants, Oldfield Mice, Gopher Tortoises, Green Salamanders (NE MS), and several sandhill plant species (Sandhill Rosemary, Rock Rose, Sandhill Milkweed, Sky-blue Lupine, Sandyfield Beaksedge) and cool season surveys have focused upon Webster’s Salamanders and Southern Zigzag Salamanders.
Tom Mann searching for YOY P. websteri
Office Work and Public Communications
Office time is focused upon data analysis and data entry into Biotics, NatureServe’s data storage program used by all Natural Heritage Programs.
We answer a lot of emails and phone calls, too, and one of the things about this job which I most treasure is working with like-minded individuals of the general public.
ANY FUNNY WORK STORIES?
During a thunderstorm at night on the 8th of March 2012, Kathy Shelton, Nick Winstead, Joelle Carney, and I were rescuing Webster’s Salamanders from harm’s way on the Trace.
I’d parked the car beneath the powerline, and the others were bringing salamanders to me at my photo station thereupon and would then return the animals to their approximate place of capture and release them beyond the west side of the road.
Four folks with advanced degrees working beneath a powerline on a night with lots of lightning! But, we were witnessing something (migratory behavior of this species) not thought to occur in this species. To field biologists it is not all about money!
TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION
Deb & Tom; Espanola I., Galapagos, 21 May 2012. Deb took her Millsaps classes (& Tom) to the Galapagos three times. Those are Marine Iguanas on the rocks around them.
The Mann’s will celebrate 50 years of marriage this month and have been a team on their bucket brigade salamander rescue work at the Natchez Trace and on their research work on Webster’s Salamanders at the Trace from 2010 to the present.
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I was born in a naval hospital in Staten Island, NY in 1950. My father was stationed in NJ at that point during the Korean War. The Navy took us as far north as Maine, where my eldest sister was born in 1952 (and where my future wife, Debora Langley was born in 1951), but by 1953, we were back in my parents’ native South (Mom from Birmingham and Pop mainly from Jackson.
We moved a lot; Pop kept changing jobs to feed a growing family. From Maine, we moved to central Florida, but by 1953, we were in Biloxi (where I stepped in my 1st fire ant bed and finished the 1st grade) in 1956.
By the 2nd grade, I was back in Florida living in an orange grove in Davenport, and where I plucked Spinybacked Orbweavers from their webs to show Mom. Davenport was just south of the sleepy, little phosphate mining town of Orlando, also then the center of Florida’s citrus industry, before arrival of the Mouse (Disney).
On to Wadsworth, Georgia, for half a year as a 3rd grader, then on to Atlanta for 2.5 years, and where my father launched me into my childhood role as chief warden at a turtle penitentiary, bringing me turtles picked up in the road all over the southeast during his work as a traveling salesman. I viewed these as pets, of course, not inmates. But, I am still doing personal karma adjustment 65 years later as I rescue salamanders from rotating vulcanized rubber on the Natchez Trace.
From Atlanta, we moved to Birmingham for the first 6 weeks of the 6th grade, and then on to Jackson, TN for the remainder of that grade. The 7th & 8th grade years found us in Tallahassee, and where my father arranged for an acquaintance in Georgia to send us a gopher tortoise. It did not thrive in our clayey yard in Tallahassee but we did not know any better.
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Then, on to Birmingham (Homewood, more precisely) for the 9th-12 grades, and there we lived on the west side of Shades Mt., atop which Mom had spent much of her childhood. I had a very long leash (via bicycle) and explored woods and streams everywhere, mainly seeking turtles and snakes, and my parents had no idea what county I was in.
The leash got longer when I got the driver’s license. I drove 30 miles away to caves near Lake Purdy, where I spelunked solo many times, and once returned home with live Tri-colored Bats (more karma adjustment would be needed).
My schoolteacher grandparents grew most of their vegetables and fruit, and I inherited that green thumb and affinity for the utility of a good compost pile.
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I received an BS at the University of Miami (and where I met Deb, who as a resident of Pompano Beach, FL since age 6 was the first person I’d spoken with who did not think the arrival of the Mouse in FL was a good thing). Deb and I met at a gator hole in the Everglades on a biology club field trip in 1971, and during which I helped her capture a Fishing Spider for one of her classes. We married in 1975 and she assisted me with my sea turtle research at Florida Atlantic Univ. (Impact of Developed Coastline on Nesting and Hatchling Sea Turtles), from which I obtained my MS degree in 1976. We then did 2 summers of sea turtle tagging and nest relocation work on Little Cumberland Island, GA in the late 70s, and I did another season of this for the USFWS on Blackbeard Island, GA.
We moved to Clemson in 1980, where Deb started her PhD program. I eventually became a zoology grad student again, too, and began another round of sea turtle research, investigating the physical characteristics of the beach transect assessed by a female turtle when choosing a nesting site, and nest site fidelity, this time on Jekyll and Little Cumberland islands.
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However, when our son arrived in 1989, I decided we needed a larger income and applied for the Natural Heritage Program Zoologist job in Mississippi.
I intended to complete the dissertation work, but several years of time-intensive field and report work on tortoises, terrapins, and salt marsh snakes complicated that, and I never achieved the doctorate.
Critical Shaping Influences:
Books!
The Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia
Dorothy Shuttlesworth’s Exploring Nature With Your Child (given to me by my maternal grandparents in 1955)
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (on my grandparent’s bookshelf, along with a zillion old National Geographics). Pop purchased a good microscope for me by the 6th grade, opening the world of pond water drop rotifers, Vorticella, Euglena, Stylonchia, and Paramecia.
Gardening
When we moved to Clinton in 1995, we purchased a home on a .87 acre lot. I asked Felder Rushing about his fruit recommendations for this area and he put me in touch with Hartwell Cook of the local group of Southern Fruit Fellowship members, and I’d soon been taught to graft and had received cuttings of scionwood from many of these folks.
We were soon growing muscadines, grapes, figs (20 varieties), blueberries of many varieties, cold-hardy citrus, pears (many varieties), Asian persimmons, jujubes, loquats, pawpaws, loquats, chestnuts, hazelnuts, and pomegranates, and developed a nice vegetable garden of 12 raised beds.
We have greatly reduced the diesel fuel in our food chain.
Cottonmouth in raised bed, 2025
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THIS CAREER?
I love Nature and have always been devoted to conservation.
I smile when encountering common tree frogs, young-of-year Ground Skinks, Spinybacked Orbweavers, chipmunks, and many other critters in our yard and elsewhere, and have for 50 years kept detailed records of the phenological procession (of wherever we happened to be living) on our wall calendars.
A jack of all trades and master of none, I work with colleagues here at the museum who are experts in different subsets of the Scala Naturae, enabling the Heritage Program to maintain a good list of the biota which are of Special Concern, and many of these folks (and others) have frequently assisted Deb and I with bucket brigade efforts and salamander research at the Trace.
HOW DOES YOUR JOB CONTRIBUTE TO CONSERVATION?
Mud Snake in Tom’s hand; Pipeline Rd. N of Hwy 43, W side reservoir
The essence of the Natural Heritage Program is determining which animals and plants are sufficiently uncommon/rare to warrant inclusion on our Special Animals and Plants tracking lists.
This does not confer protection, but during the environmental review process (when required, typically of projects receiving state and/or federal funding) this might help mitigate/avoid impacts of projects to such species, but unless creatures are on the state or federal endangered lists there is no real protection.
Even then, protection mainly means that possession isn’t permitted, though absent general habitat protection, and appropriate management where needed, protection is mainly inadequate.
Until our species acknowledges the intrinsic value and right to existence of other biota, genuine conservation is problematic. It can’t just be about us.
Even as a 3rd grader in ever-expanding Atlanta, I could see that there were too many of us, ever demolishing habitats of other biota to make more subdivision habitats for people like me. Seven years later, though not yet a professional biologist, I was dismayed by anthropogenic alterations to the Shades Mountain of Mom’s youth, now cleaved by I-65 and cloaked with subdivisions except on the steepest slopes.
The educational component of our job is essential; by passing along knowledge and passion to the next generation, perhaps ultimately the biosphere will benefit.
Tom Mann with crawfish Clark Creek Natural Area Amite Co 2/19/14
Perhaps it will be safer for a salamander or frog to cross the Natchez Trace on a wet, winter night, or for Gulf Sturgeon, Ringed Sawbacks, or rare mussels to live in the Pearl River.
ANY ADVICE FOR A STUDENT INTERESTED IN A BIOLOGY OR MUSEUM CAREER?
If one becomes sufficiently knowledgeable about anything, someone will probably pay you to work with it.