Colin Donihue

Again, people pictures are thanks to Kat!

We spend a lot of our time stalking lizards.

Here’s Zach looking awesome on a hill.

He got one!

Then they bring the lizards to me and I measure them.

I do miss catching the little guys, but I make sure my measuring station at least has a good view.

Usually a really good view.

In the field I’m counting things like ticks, the number of lizards that don’t have tails, sex of lizard and a few other easy to measure things. The most time consuming process is stomach flushing. There’ll be a whole post devoted to it one of these days but it’s a bit nasty so I want to be sure to get some really up-close shots of the grossness!

Angus is videotaping and catching lizards for later behavioral analyses, while Kat and Zach are doing the bulk of the lizard hauling back to me. It’s a good system and we’re well past 100 lizards already!

Once the lizards are caught and their stomach flushed, we bring them back to the lab for an evening of poking, prodding, measuring, and photographing. They don’t seem to mind overmuch and the all-you-can-eat mealworms are certainly a plus. They go back to their home turf the next day, well-fed and with quite the story to tell all their pals.