I’ve spent the last two months working in a new desk (and new zip code) and have yet to update you all. Sorry! Surprise, I’m spending this year in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, working with Dr. Jonathan Losos. The goal is to think more about evolution in my Greek lizards.
As you likely can tell from the last year’s worth of posts, my dissertation research is taking an increasingly evolutionary bent. I’m still writing up and I’m hoping to defend in the next 6 months or so, but in the interim I wanted to get a stronger background in lizard evolution. This is the place to do it. Jonathan, his students, and a small army of colleagues have been working for the last few decades to tease out the fascinating evolutionary stories to be told by Anolis lizards in the Caribbean. You can read about the research on their terrific blog called Anole Annals. There’s a lot of lighter fare there too that’ll appeal to everyone if you’re interested – a lizard playground?! I’m working on infiltrating with Podarcis posts.
The new digs are great and the new lab group has been amazing to work and brainstorm with. It’s so much fun to hang out with so many people excited about lizards!! We even have a lab mascot “Sammy” the crested gecko.
He lives next to my desk and likes to come over and give encouragement on my post-doc applications.
There’ll be lots more stories because (surprise again), I’m headed to the Bahamas tomorrow to go catch lizards. Check back in to the twitter and instagram side bars, I’ll be updating from the field and will be back to give you a full rundown before the end of the month!
Colin Donihue 