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Fence Lizard Project
Fence Lizard Project
For my PhD, I started a research system to study western fence lizards (Sceloporus occidentalis) in the Great Basin Desert of Northern Nevada. For 3 years, I have been tracking two populations of these lizards, living in drastically different thermal environments, alongside fellow graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and a small team of undergraduates, through mark-recapture. To date, we have uniquely identified over 900 individuals and recorded more than 3,500 captures. I combine this immense database with lab-based measurements and high-resolution thermal landscapes to understand how macro- and microclimatic differences shape natural selection on traits such as metabolic rates and gestation length.
A hatchling western fence lizard. Adorable, almost illegally cute, but insanely hard to spot and even harder to catch!
After hundreds of visits, you end up knowing who is who among the lizards. At high elevation, "Backstreet" (H025, Blue-Silver-Pink, top) has been recaptured 9 times. At low elevation, "Matthieu" (L089, Yellow-Blue-Blue, bottom) has been re-captured 21 times. Above are pictures of these two, and other "famous" lizards.
Lizards experience radically different environments along the elevational gradient. The high-elevation population (2,400 m, top) experiences a substantially cooler and more thermally variable environment than the low-elevation one (1,200 m, bottom), but it also lacks competitors and has more food available.
Aside from the western fence lizards, we see 6 other lizard species in our sites, including "horny toads" (i.e., Desert horned lizards, Phrynosoma platyrhinos, 1), whiptail (Aspidoscelis tigris, 2), collared (Crotaphytus bicinctores, 3), and yellow-backed spiny lizards (Sceloporus uniformis, 4).
Days in the field can be long and hot, but the views and the lizards make it all worth it. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to call these mountains and valleys my "office".
Fellow graduate student Akhila Gopal and undergrad Allison Dorny sneakily approach a lizard at the high elevation site
Former post-doc and drone commander Dr. Karla "Keke" Alujević flies our thermal imaging drone at the low elevation site.
After countless visits, not only did I become familiar with the lizards, but they also became familiar with me. Here's L045 (Blue - Blue - Pink) using my back as a basking spot.
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