A limerick for the night: After an hour, the rain had passed Toads, frogs, and salamanders amassed They stared back, even a newt All posed for their photo shoot My expectations, the night had surpassed I truly enjoyed the night. I did not expect to see has many little critters as we did, all fascinating … Continue reading Marissa’s First Salamander!!
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a young salamander. You have spent the first several months of your life swimming around a pond, munching away on small aquatic invertebrates (zooplankton) and hiding from predators (Photo 1). Strangely, it has become harder and harder to swim gracefully in the last few weeks. You suddenly have … Continue reading The Chipojo Lab Gets Slimy
There are few things as bone chilling as the forest at night. In Puerto Rico, nighttime in the forest is abuzz with the calls of coqui frogs, so many insects, and the occasional witch-like laughter of screech owls. The invasive cane toads emerge en masse, their enormous mass plopping around the forest floor snatching up … Continue reading How do twig anoles sleep?
Manuel shares his views about inclusion and equity with the MU community: https://gradschool.missouri.edu/dr-manuel-leal/
First update in a while, and on our brand new WordPress blog! The pandemic has affected all aspects of our society, and scientific research is no exception. For the last few months we have been conducting all of our scholarly work through email and Zoom from the isolation comfort of our homes. It has been … Continue reading Another one bites the bust!
Those that follow the Chipojoblog are familiar with one of our core tenets: strive as best you can to design experiments under natural conditions. This philosophy reflects my own view that behavior should be studied in the field whenever possible. Our recent paper in Current Zoology, “Visual playback of colorfulsignals in the field supports sensory drive … Continue reading Brighter is not always better
Greetings from the southeast coast of Florida! My name is Stephanie, and I am working as a research assistant here with Levi and another assistant Leslie. We have been working in Florida for about a month now and will soon start running our experiment once preparation has been completed. For this experiment, Levi is testing … Continue reading Island Experiment on A. sagrei in Florida
Greetings from El Verde—team Anolis gundlachi rides again! I am back at the station to observe the behavior of female A. gundlachi, joined by two fabulous helpers—Jessica and Phil. Phil joins us on a quick break from the Steen Lab at Auburn University. He’s met some A. cristatellus in Miami before, but he is enjoying getting to know some of the other species … Continue reading Team Perserverence
Welcome to another non-anole portion of the lab! Stephanie and I are currently studying problem solving in Sceloporus consobrinus, the Eastern fence lizard. We are using a similar setup to past testing of anole behavior by others in the lab but are instead testing a lizard native to Missouri. Our biggest challenge so far hasn't been … Continue reading Fence lizard cognition
Eddie, was awarded a Student Research Grant from the Animal Behavior Society. Eddie’s project will evaluate the potential contribution of head-bob displays to species recognition in anoles, and if hybrid populations exhibit head-bob displays that are distinct to the displays of the parental species.
Chipojo Lab 