As any serious birder will tell you, bird songs and calls are often the best – and sometimes the only – way to tell bird species apart in the field. In the central Great Plains, for example, Eastern and Western Meadowlarks (Sturnella magna and S. neglecta) look nearly identical. But as soon as they sing [...]

It’s DDIG season. That means that I, along with most other Ph.D. candidates in my field, have spent the last several weeks working on an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (or DDIG). A lot of the graduate school experience (in the sciences, at least) is applying for small grants to support your research. The DDIG [...]

My blogging pace has slackened recently, but I promise it’s not because I’m not doing stuff. On the contrary, I’m doing so much stuff that I haven’t had time to post anything here. So here are a couple of quick updates: in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on processing and analyzing the [...]

If the idea of a couple hundred thousand termites pouring out of a rotting stump distresses you, then read no further. In May, I was scouting field sites in Miami, trying to find some good places for one of my anole experiments. In one park (A. D. Barnes Park), I encountered something completely unexpected: a [...]

Doing field research means spending long hours out in nature, day after day, week after week, often performing mundane, repetitive tasks. To someone who has never tried it for themselves, this probably sounds excruciatingly boring. And, to be fair, it can be. But in biology, like photography, persistence and patience are essential – nature always [...]

I talk a lot about anoles in this blog, especially the species found in Florida. A few weeks ago I posted some pictures and commentary on the anoles of Puerto Rico, but I haven’t had a chance to show you the impressive diversity of anoles that live in South Florida. There is only one native [...]

During our fieldwork, we recently encountered a male Anolis cristatellus with two tails. This is the result of a peculiarity of lizards’ tail regeneration process. Like many lizards, anoles can lose their tails if they’re grabbed by a predator (or, it turns out, a biologist!). This process is called “caudal autotomy.” As a defensive tactic, [...]

Research almost never progresses in a straight line, and this is particularly true of field research. When biologists encounter unexpected obstacles, we often have to improvise new data collection methods or modify our experiments to fit the current situation. I’ve already run into some surprises this year, and it’s been a challenge to figure out [...]

As most of you know, I’m studying anoles — small lizards in the genus Anolis — for my Ph.D. dissertation. I was just in Puerto Rico with my two field assistants to gather some male Anolis cristatellus for behavioral experiments. While there, we observed and captured half a dozen anole species, representing considerable variation in [...]

I posted this link on Facebook last week, but in case you missed it, I was interviewed by National Geographic editor David Braun about my research (which is partly funded by a National Geographic Young Explorers Grant) and my participation in the upcoming Bioblitz in Biscayne National Park. The Bioblitz is a 24-hour biological inventory, [...]