My last field season as a graduate student ended in late June. Over the last three years, I spent amost a year living on Formentera, in the Spanish Mediterranean conducting my PhD research and enjoying island life. In this gallery I share some images of these islands that I came to love, and the lizard research that brought me there. Click the image or here to check it out!
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Or can you? For much of the 20th century, scientists thought that the human brain didn’t change much after adolescence. But now, thanks in part to sophisticated brain imaging techniques, we’re starting to realize that the adult brain is actually quite dynamic! Many of our everyday activities can influence not only our brain’s capabilities, but its structure as well.
A few months ago, my wife Liz informed me that the Society for Neuroscience was organizing a video contest for their 2011 meeting. We’d been meaning to create a video together for a while, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. After some initial brainstorming and writing, a few days of shooting, and many hours of editing, we submitted this short film (below) to the contest.
We knew there would be plenty of competition – the annual SfN meeting is attended by tens of thousands of scientists, making it one of the biggest scientific conferences in the world. As expected, the video competition received lots of submissions, and unfortunately ours wasn’t selected as one of the winners.
You can see the winners here – I think the first place film, The Treasure Hunt, is really well done, and a very deserving winner.
But it’s not over yet! We have another chance to win when the voting public chooses the People’s Choice Award. Voting will start later this week, and when the online voting begins we’ll let you know how you can help us take home the prize!
Last week, we released a new video about . Today, our video was posted on National Geographic’s website! Click here to check out the link!
Ok, so it’s been a while since I’ve done a “Good Stuff” post. I’ve undoubtedly missed quite a lot of Good Stuff since the last one, but that’s OK. There’s always more where that came from.
I stumbled across this series of videos the other day, exploring evolution through hip-hop. It’s definitely not a general, textbook interpretation of evolution, but instead an interesting collection of more topical vignettes, some more tangential than others. Only 3 videos have been produced so far, but the production quality is consistently high (not unexpected, given that the project has been funded by the Wellcome Trust). Definitely worth a look!
features a really compelling character from Tennessee, speaking in favor of preserving green space in his (and everyone’s community). You’ll just have to watch to see what I mean. It’s a really refreshing perspective — I think we’re all used to hearing conservation messages coming from affluent, intellectual liberals. This message comes from a very different place, and because it defies convention, becomes even more powerful. Incidentally, this video was shot by my good friend Ian Shive.
My friend Molly Mehling recently pointed me towards , a nonprofit aimed at pairing adventurers (climbers, alpinists, etc.) with scientists to collect unique data from inhospitable places. By creating such partnerships, they aim to help scientists, of course, but also to empower adventurers to do more to protect the places they love. It’s a really cool idea, and they’ve already been getting some . I look forward to seeing more from this group.
Finally, our friend Neil Ever Osborne, a conservation photographer and Associate of the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP), has a new project: “Return of the Black Turtle.” This project is a great example of a scientist (Wallace J. Nichols) pairing with a photographer (Osborne) to tell an important conservation story. Osborne is funding the project through Emphas.is, a new crowd-funding platform devoted entirely to photojournalism projects. The project won’t get funded unless Osborne reaches his funding goal! Learn more about the project and contribute here.
Conservation biologist Wallace J. Nichols. Photo by Neil Ever Osborne
from on .
An occupational hazard
When I’m working in the field in Florida, I get bitten by dozens of anoles every day. I can’t blame them – if I were suddenly captured by an enormous creature wielding a noose on a fishing pole, I’d probably bite my captor too! Luckily, the bites aren’t too painful; anoles are generally small (a few inches long and about one-quarter of an ounce in weight), and their tiny teeth rarely break the skin. Still, until recently I never imagined that I’d actually be encouraging my research subjects to bite.
Why measure bite force?
That changed after my 2010 field season, when I discovered that crested anoles (Anolis cristatellus) had a subtly different head shape in Florida – where they are an invasive species – than in their native range of Puerto Rico. In lizards, head shape is related to “bite force,” the amount of force an animal can exert between its jaws. I found that Florida’s crested anoles had more robust heads than Puerto Rico’s crested anoles, suggesting that they might also be capable of biting harder.
This year, one of my goals was to measure the bite force of crested anoles directly. If bite force is, in fact, greater in Florida than in Puerto Rico, what would that mean? Well, it would suggest that something about Florida’s environment favors individuals that can bite harder. Maybe crested anoles encounter insects with particularly hard exoskeletons in Florida. Or perhaps a powerful bite helps male crested anoles defend territories against rival species in Florida that do not occur in Puerto Rico. Either way, the first step is testing whether native and invasive crested anoles differ in bite force.
Measuring bite force in Florida and Puerto Rico meant, of course, traveling to Puerto Rico (oh, the injustice!). While I was there, my friend Nate Dappen and I filmed this short video to show how – and why – one measures a lizard’s bite.
To see a previous episode of Field Vision featuring my work in Florida, click here.
Research and teaching have dominated our lives for the last few weeks, but exciting things are coming — both on the web and, if you live in Washington, DC or Los Angeles, in your neighborhood. My work will be featured in a couple of fun public events this fall. The more people that come, the better! Here’s the skinny:
Event #1 is the first-ever National Geographic “Young Explorers Salon,” which brings together three Young Explorers (I’m one of them) to talk about our adventures and projects. The event is scheduled for 7pm on Friday, October 14 at the National Geographic headquarters in DC. Here’s how the NG Live! brochure describes it:
Sit back in a casual club setting, sip a drink, enjoy a bite, and share the evening with three extraordinary individuals. These recipients of Nat Geo’s 2011 Young Explorers grants are making their mark on the world of exploration and adventure.
Moderated by HANNAH BLOCH of National Geographic Magazine in Nat Geo’s dining hall!
Meet EMILY AINSWORTH, an Oxford graduate, anthropologist, and photographer who joined Mexican circus troupes to capture “what went on when the curtain fell and the lights went off.”
Meet SHANNON SWITZER, a surfer, photographer, and environmentalist who works to raise awareness of the urban pollution affecting rivers, the ocean, and her local San Diego surfing community.
Meet NEIL LOSIN, a filmmaker, photographer, and UCLA PhD evolutionary biologist who studies invasive Caribbean lizards to explain the evolution of territoriality.
For more information on the location, and to buy tickets, click here. And of course, please share this invitation as you see fit. Hope to see you there!
Event #2 is an opening reception for an exhibit of my work at the G2 Gallery, a nature photography gallery in Venice, CA. Some details are still being ironed out, but I will be one of three photographers featured in the annual “Emerging” exhibit, which features young photographers. My exhibit will be a display of bird photos from the Santa Monica Mountains region, as part of an ongoing collaboration I have with the Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society. The opening reception is scheduled for Thursday, November 17th, and I’ll be sure to post all the details as soon as they’re available.