Recently my work on urban lizard locomotor performance was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. This manuscript is part of a special issue on urban evolution, “The Evolution of City Life”, which will be coming out in paper form any day now. Looking for the videos? JUMP straight to them at the bottom … Continue reading
Yesterday I submitted the final version of my dissertation. There are a ton of people who deserve thanks for all the help and support along the way. Here’s the short-list, but really, there are far more people that helped in ways big or small but simply not enough space to thank them all sufficiently. This of course … Continue reading
This fall I sat down with Public Radio International’s “Living on Earth” team to talk about my urban anole research. I’m excited that it finally aired this weekend! One minor correction, they incorrectly identify me as an associate professor. I am still in graduate school (though hopefully not too much longer!). You can hear it … Continue reading
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been systematically sifting through the urban ecology literature as part of a review I’m working on. One thing I’ve noticed over and over is that a very large number of publications refer to plants and animals present in urban areas as species that have “adapted” to urbanization. The … Continue reading
In case you missed it, my paper on phenotypic shifts in urban populations of Anolis cristatellus is the cover story for this month’s edition of the journal Evolution (May 2016). The issue is online here if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I discussed briefly the findings in a previous post on this site, … Continue reading
I’m a little late on announcing this since I have been in the field in Puerto Rico for the past week, but I’m extremely excited to announce that our manuscript on urban adaptation in Anolis cristatellus is now online as accepted in the journal Evolution! This paper is the culmination of the first 3 years … Continue reading
Following up on my previous post about our work on caudal autotomy, I’m happy to share that our paper from undergraduate Kirsten Tyler’s senior honor’s thesis is out now (online) in Journal of Herpetology Kirsten analyzed the hundreds of X-rays I’ve taken of urban and natural anoles across Puerto Rico and found consistently higher frequency of … Continue reading
Five years after completing my masters at Columbia University with C.U. adjunct James Gibbs (SUNY ESF), my turtle research finally sees the light of day. “Golf courses as habitat for aquatic turtles in urbanized landscapes”, in press at Landscape and Urban Planning, was my first introduction into urban ecology. I started this project thinking that I … Continue reading
Just a quick note. A few months back I went to Bimini with members of the Losos lab at Harvard. On that trip we had the opportunity to visit the remote Great Isaac Cay. Until now there has been no published herpetofaunal survey of the island. Last week our short travelogue came out in the … Continue reading
Yesterday was the beginning of a 14 day research trip to Puerto Rico. So far the trip has been very exciting. I’m here with graduate student Elizabeth Carlen (@E_Carlen) and budding young biologist Jessica Li. We are working primarily at the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo this time. Instead of staying at our … Continue reading
Adaptability 