This last week was the “10th Symposium on the Lacertids of the Mediterranean Basin and 2nd Symposium on Mediterranean Lizards.” I know… a mouthful. There was just about more conference title than participants. All told, about 50 people similarly excited about lizards living in Mediterranean habitats descended on Tel Aviv and shared their work. The … More A quick trip to Israel
Claire’s back in Paris so I’ve mostly spent this week entering data, finalizing one manuscript (more on that very soon), and submitting another. It’s been busy, but not pretty. I did get out into the field for a bit though to catch some last lizards for a project with Kinsey and snapped some shots. Here … More Some recent photos from the field
It was a breakneck two weeks of sampling, but we’ve caught, measured, and released all the lizards in the island experiment! The 2018 census is in the books. Or at least, on a huge stack of data sheets waiting to be typed into my computer. The lizards are doing great! All of the populations are … More The lizards are in the books!
We’ve just finished the first week of the 2018 introduction island survey and the lizard populations are doing well! Week 1 was focused on the islands to the north of Paros in the Bay of Naoussa: Galiatsos, Mavronissi, and Agios Artemios. The population densities on Mavronissi and Agios Artemios have remained about constant since last … More One week into lizard surveying
Frequent visitors to the blog will remember my Redonda adventure earlier this year. If you want to catch up, here are a few posts about my trip to Antigua and Barbuda, and from there to the remote island of Redonda. My goal was to collect baseline data so I could figure out how three endemic … More Next stop, Turks and Caicos!
There’s lots going on here in the field. We’ve just wrapped up collecting on Eleuthera and Long Island. I’m back on New Providence swapping out crew. Rob left after Eleuthera. He swapped spots with Geoff. We just lost Jon – a champion lizard catcher on Eleuthera and Long. Raphaël is still here and we’re being … More A quick picture update from the Bahamas
One of our first goals on Redonda was to get a good sense for the density of lizards on the island. This is one of the key metrics that has changed following rat eradications elsewhere in the Lesser Antilles. To do that we used a few different methods, we’re hoping that each will give us a slightly different … More Walking around Redonda
The Redonda posts have trailed off because I’m neck-deep in prepping for the next two trips this field season. I’ve still got a few more Redonda stories in mind to write up though so I’ll try to get them posted before I leave next week. I have to tell you about the next trips though! Next Saturday I’m headed … More More fieldwork on the horizon
This post is reposted from http://www.anoleannals.com and so might be a little familiar in its start to readers here. I’m back from Redonda and the expedition was a great success! I’m happy to report there were many Anolis nubilus boulder-hopping out of the way of the black rats and even blacker ground lizards on the island. In many ways the … More Reporting on the Reptiles of Redonda
Initially I thought getting to Redonda was going to be a challenge, but the helicopter made that aspect of the trip a delightful adventure. Living on Redonda for a week, though—that was tough. In retrospect, I’d say the challenge was simultaneously harder than anticipated but more comfortable than I’d feared. Here’s a panorama of our camp: There … More Living on Redonda
Colin Donihue 