Bright and Early

Angie and Maria hard at work transcribing videos at SEVEN IN THE MORNING before what will be a long day in the field!
Such dedication makes El Jefe jump for joy.

Run Lizard Run

Alex is currently in Puerto Rico conducting fieldwork. As part of his project, he is measuring temperature dependent sprint speed on all the members of the cristatellus group. Take a look at his improvised laboratory setup, which includes, high-speed video (120 frames per second), lizard race-track, school desk and whiteboard.

Land Bridge

Over the last few years we have wondered if lizards can move between Y5 (one of our experimental islands) and a relatively small island located a few meters away. Usually, these islands are divided by a channel of approximately 2.75 meters wide and 1 meter deep. However, during periods of extremely low tide -- we are currently in one of those periods (see picture) -- a couple of land bridges are formed between the two cays.

Today, I got the answer to our question. I was conducting behavioral observations on Y5 and decided to take a quick look around the adjacent small island. To my surprise a curly was happily perching in the middle of the island. The curly had Tom's signature. In other words, it was marked by him last week as part of his population census which he only does on Y5. Thus, the matter seems to be settled, lizards are able to move between the two islands during periods of extremely low tide. For some of my colleagues this is another example of "The Principle of Unsympathetic Magic"

Plunger

We have had a series of exciting events over the last two days. Yesterday, we had a minor, or may be major, hiccup with the toilet. In a nutshell, instead of flushing it was more like a fountain shooting "water" over its rim. After a series of unsuccessful and somewhat messy plungers attempts, three different types of plungers to be exact, we were able to control the fountain in a less messy way. Another trip to town and a bottle of "draino" did the trick. At the moment the fountain seems to be under control. Today, we began the afternoon with a close encounter between the tire of our van and my backpack. The result of the collision, a crushed METAL water bottle and an extremely uncomfortable backpack frame -- it looks like backpack frames are not as hardy as a pelican cases! To finish the day, it is clear that operating fancy electronic gadgets is not one of my strengths. I expressed to the youngest member of the team my frustration with trying to delete a picture from her camera. And after receiving a 'give me a break' type of exclamation, I was reminded "you ONLY need to push the button with the symbo of the trashcan to delete a picture."

Guess Who

Can you guess who is the unexpected visitor.

TEACHING TIME

Dave hard at work, teaching Angie, Maria, and Dustin how to extract and enter the data from the focal observations (i.e., videos). You can see how attentive Angie is to Dave's advice, while Dustin is in the background getting his computer ready. I have to say, Dave is a NATURAL at teaching, particularly in this type of improvised situations. He is cool as a cucumber and extremely clear. Fieldwork and teaching are clearly his calling.

Leiocephalus Diet

The diet of Leiocephalus keeps expanding. Today we discovered that they also prey upon the introduced house gecko (Hemidactylus mabouia). At Snake Cay, I caught an adult female curly, (SVL 78 mm) and while handling her, she barfed a blob of body parts, including a relatively undigested tail (see attached picture). Based on the size of the tail my best guess is that it was a juvenile gecko of approximately 35 mm SVL. Take a careful look at the tail and you should see the very distinctive triangular scales and the banded pattern characteristic of Hemidactulus mabouia.