Wow! What an eventful summer this last one was! With the help of VUW summer scholar Florence Kelly, MSc student Bjorn Koch from the University of Duisberg-Essen, Conservation Volunteers New Zealand and more keen volunteers from the local community, most of the fieldwork for the ‘lizard garden’ research programme is now complete. Some members of…
Where did the tiles go?
The brown tiles, also known as Onduline Artificial Cover Objects (ACOs) are going to be taken in for a couple of months this winter. This doesn’t mean that the lizard garden project has finished though – they are only being packed down temporarily. We’re doing this to standardize the monitoring process. The problem is that…
Here today, gone tomorrow: tail loss in reptiles
While working in the field, I’m often asked by volunteers about the interesting little feat of autotomy; that is, the ability for a lizard to drop its tail and re-grow it… which is a subject that has been of interest to physiologists for some time. Fair enough, I say. I mean, imagine being in the…
No gold here Sir, just lizards
This is a thank you post in which I got *slightly* carried away making bad jokes about ecological field research. My office mates and I had a conversation a while ago about all the absurdly specialized skills that one acquires during the course of a PhD. In my case, I think (1) “Expert hole digger”…
2016/2017 summer in the field: a photo essay
This summer of my PhD research has mostly been spent traveling to various sites around the Wellington region surveying transects for lizards. Here’s some pictures that summarize the adventures had.
Like this research? You can help!
How can you help? Please, please, please (!) leave any flagging tape and/or lizard monitoring equipment as you found it. Disturbance of the monitoring equipment may scare off any lizards that are using it and affect the reliability of the research. If you notice someone disturbing the sites, please tell them not to if you…
Lizard garden research
Hello! Here’s an overview of my PhD research project, entitled: Can habitat enhancement (aka gardening for lizards) improve the resilience of endemic lizard populations in the presence of alien predators? Background Habitat loss is the most severe threat to global biodiversity. While reservation of pristine natural areas and restoration of degraded ecosystems are effective for…
What are all these orange flagging tapes and brown tiles about?
The quick answer is: lizard conservation research! The longer answer is as follows… Hello! You’ve probably arrived here because you came across of my field sites around the Wellington region in New Zealand. Welcome! My name is Sarah Herbert and I’m a PhD student at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW). My thesis topic is: Can…
About this blog
If you’re wondering, the somewhat cryptic title of this blog – SCritterBlog – actually stands for Sarah’s Critter Blog. Because my name is Sarah and I like critters. I’ve liked critters from an early age. And when I say critters, I actually mean pretty much anything that’s alive: be it animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, you…
Know your New Zealand natives: goldstripe gecko
It’s acrobatic grace and golden good looks will steal your heart, and what’s more, there’s only one region on mainland New Zealand that you can find this month’s native animal, the goldstripe gecko (Woodworthia chrysosireticus). There are still quite a few of these little geckos throughout their patch on the western coast of the North…
Know your New Zealand natives: copper skink
If you see a sleek little brown skink slinking around your garden, and you live in the North Island, chances are it’s a copper skink. These guys are more scientifically known as Oligosoma aeneum, and are the second smallest native lizard in New Zealand, not longer than a truly titchy 12 centimetres. While they are…
The confusing evolutionary identity of turtles
The topic I’d like to discuss today represents a major controversy in our understanding of the phylogeny (family tree) of reptiles (and birds, which are just a fancy kind of reptile). Turtles have been in a state of identity crisis for some time as scientists have debated the origins of our shelled friends, and two…
SCritterBlog 