Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Lots of Lizards, big and small


We have been catching lizards for four days now, and we have nearly eclipsed the 500 lizard mark!!!  That is a ton of lizards, even for us!  There are several reasons we are having such lizard catching success.  Overall, the populations have established very well and are growing.  But another important factor is the time of year. 

Last time we came in April just before the reproductive season.  Many of the babies from the previous summer had died and the surviving ones were relatively large.  This time, we are coming in October, at the end of the long reproductive season.  The eggs that were laid between April and August have now hatched and there are baby lizards everywhere.  Many lizards don’t survive to adulthood, but by monitoring the lizards right after they hatch, we are very likely to catch the babies. Thus, this time of year has more lizards than any other time on the islands.

Another cool thing about our project is we are getting "recaptures".  When we capture a lizard, we will mark its toes and release it back on the island.  When we come back on a trip 6 months or a year later, we will be able to figure out if we had caught that lizard before and then learn about how much its grown and what traits may have helped it survive.  On this trip, we have already recaptured two "Founders" or the original lizard we released in April 2011. They have been out on these islands for 1.5 years, which is very old for an Anole lizard in the wild.  And very cool for us!

Anole lizards have no parental care, so the baby lizards pop out of eggs as miniature versions of mom and dad.  They are feeding on really small insects and evading predators from day 1.  They only thing that the youngsters aren’t worried about that the adults are is mating, but that will wait for now. These lizards grow very fast and as you can see in the video, a baby lizard might grow up to 70 times its size as a baby.




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