Matthew Safford, Professional Lizard Rangler

As of last week, I've been helping one of the professors from USFQ do research on lava lizards, Microlophus albemarlensis, the little guys that are constantly scurrying over the lava flows and side walks in town.  The research is to try and study their territoriality, and what kinds of behavior they exhibit and why.  The rough idea is that each male has a harem of several females and a large territory, and that both he and the females both work to guard the territory.  But our professor is questioning how much work males put into defense, and if they leave most of the work to females.  

Right now, we're finishing up tagging lizards- for the sake of building a knowledge base, we only study behavior in lizards that we've measured, so when we catch a lizard, we paint it with 2 dots (white =0, red = 1, blue =2), so that each lizard has a unique 3 number name.  To catch them, we have fishing line tied to sticks, with a noose tied in the end of the line.  We sneak up behind the lizard, and try and drop the noose over his/her head and pull it taught.  Once we catch them, we can hold them and loosen the noose.  However, all of that is a lot harder than it looks:  they're really fast, are suspicious of the noose, and over rough terrain can move much more easily than us humans.  

 pregnant femal, as shown by the red under her chin, which females only develop after they'e mated

Now that we've tagged some lizards, we've started on studying their behavior- one major thing we observe is the headbobs they make: when they make them, how long, and if we can tell, why.  Both sexes make the bobs, and it seems like it's a multipurpose gesture- males bob at females, the lizards bob at us when we get to close, and it seems like they always bob before they move.  A common movement for them is to bob for a second, dart a foot or 2, look around, bob again, and then move again.  Our professor isn't only the island right now, so while it's harder to ask him about what we see, it gives us a lot of autonomy to determine when to go out, and in seeing the lizards in the National Park.  We have 2 observation areas set up, each 20 x 20 meters.  One is right behind the univeristy, while the other is in the National Park, a 5 minute walk off trail into the bush.  

males have well defined grey and yellow bands, and a darker color pattern than the females