As you have heard before on Anole Annals, the Lizards On The Loose project involves middle school students conducting anole surveys in their back yards, school grounds, and local parks throughout South Florida. You can read more about the background and early results of this project in an earlier AA post which summarizes my talk at the Ecological Society of America’s (ESA) 2016 annual meeting.

Well, now we have updated results! Chris Thawley, a postdoc in Jason Kolbe’s lab and new member of the Lizards On The Loose team, has produced this video which explains what we have learned from the new data collected by students during their 2016-17 surveys. One species that we are particularly interested in is the Puerto Rican crested anole (Anolis cristatellus), whose distribution in Miami has been closely monitored since their introduction in the 1970s (see Kolbe et al. 2016 for a review of this species’ range dynamics in Miami). To our amazement, middle school students identified populations of crested anoles that were brand new to us! Watch below for more information:

James T. Stroud