Biography
After completing his civil service in a nursing home, Lehr studied biology from 1990 to 1996 at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, earning his diploma in biology. His thesis, On the intraspecific variability of the Indochinese box turtle Cuora galbinifrons (Testudines: Emydidae) Bourret, 1939, earned him a master's degree in 1996. In 2001, he received a doctorate (Dr. phil. nat.), magna cum laude, in zoology with the dissertation The herpetofauna along the 10th parallel of Peru: species inventory, taxonomy, ecological notes, and biogeographical relationships. [1] [2]
From 2005 to 2006, he worked as a research assistant in the Department of Herpetology at the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center at the University of Kansas. Since 2007, Lehr has been curator of herpetology at the Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden . In 2008, he earned his habilitation at the University of Koblenz-Landau with the thesis On the taxonomy, morphology, and phylogeny of strabomantid frogs in Peru. [1]
Since 1993, Lehr has participated in herpetological expeditions to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Peru. In Peru, he supports amphibian conservation projects, while in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, he is involved in turtle conservation. He has described several new species of toads and South American frogs from Peru, including Bufo chavin and several taxa of the genus Phrynopus . Together with Swiss-Peruvian herpetologist Alessandro Catenazzi, Lehr discovered Noblella pygmaea in 2009, the smallest known species of Andean frog. [1]
In 2023, Lehr named the Peruvian snake Tachymenoides harrisonfordi in honor of actor Harrison Ford. [3]
