I’ve been sitting on this story for months and I’m excited to finally be able to share it. Remember that work we did in Turks and Caicos last fall? Well, we found something pretty remarkable: the hurricanes caused big shifts in the lizard populations living on both Pine Cay and Water Cay that may have … More Hurricane-induced selection on the morphology of an island lizard
So the primary goal this year was to walk the islands and catch as many of the remaining lizards as possible. With a complete census of the population, we can start getting awesome data on natural selection’s “filters” dictating survival of the fittest. Even better, by taking careful measurements of the survivors we can figure out … More Working on the islands
The first step to figuring out if the physical appearance of these lizards do indeed change according to their ecological context was to visit natural history museums, looking for patterns in preserved specimens. After a bit of searching, I found that Yale, Harvard and the American Museum of Natural History in NYC all had preserved … More Jars full of lizards
I’ll give you the full spiel on my research plans in bits and pieces so as not to bore you. For now, the big picture: My research centers around the impacts of human land use on ecological systems. I’m focusing primarily on a Greek Wall Lizard, Podarcis erhardii, which lives in the Cyclades. I hypothesize … More The Plan
Colin Donihue 