Lizards and Friends
A website about lizards, scientists who study lizards, and kids who think lizards are cool!
Blog!
Hi, my name is McKenzie and I am in my third year at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. I have spent the last two summers working with lizards and I would like to tell you about a cool project[...]
In spring and summer in Texas, we see lizards everywhere we look. They’re climbing on the trees, crawling on the ground, and running around the walls of our houses. If you watch a lizard for a few minutes in the[...]
My name is Bonnie, and I work in the Lizard Lab as a research technician. In my job, I feed the lizards we keep in the lab, use a microscope to measure cells in the muscles of our lizards, and[...]
Welcome to the Lizards and Friends website! My name is Michele, and I’m a scientist who studies how lizards behave. I’m interested in how lizards “talk” to each other, and how their brains send signals to their muscles to cause[...]
Club LizKids
Are you a kid (or an adult) excited about lizards? Then Club LizKids is for you! (if you are under 13 years old, you need to ask for permission from your parent or guardian to sign up for the club)
Members of Club LizKids will receive monthly emails with cool pictures and interesting facts about lizards. We will not share your email address with anyone else, and we will only use your email address to send you Club LizKids updates.
Email Us
We’d like to hear from you!
Do you have a question about lizards for a member of the Lizard Lab? Have you seen lizards do something funny, or cool, or confusing? Or do you have another question about science? Send us a note, and we’ll email you in response.
For Teachers
Lizards can be excellent classroom pets, and there are many classroom activities in which you can use lizards to teach science, math, reading, writing, and more! The following activities were developed for use in fifth grade classes in Texas, as part of Trinity University’s Science Teaching Institute, to address Texas science teaching standards. We encourage you to adapt these materials in any way you find to be useful in your own classroom.
If you are a teacher near San Antonio, Texas, and would like to invite members of Dr. Michele Johnson’s laboratory to visit your classroom, please contact us at michele.johnson@trinity.edu.
How to keep green anole lizards as classroom pets
(DOC // PDF)
How do lizards get energy from their food? An experimental study in three parts.*
(DOC // PDF)
Oh what a tangled web…An activity exploring food webs, using a simple math model
(DOC // PDF)
About
This website is maintained by Dr. Michele Johnson, a lizard biologist at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and the members of the Johnson Laboratory. We are scientists who study how and why lizards behave the way they do. You can learn more about the Johnson Lab at www.trinity.edu/mjohnso9.
Michele Johnson has a Ph.D. in ecology and evolution, and the members of the Johnson Lab (called the Lizard Lab on this website) are college students. We hope this website will show how exciting it is to learn new things about lizards, and how anyone can be a scientist by looking carefully at the world around you.
–Johnson Lab, 2013–
Support for this website comes from the National Science Foundation (IOS-1257021) and from Trinity University’s Department of Biology
This website is maintained by Dr. Michele Johnson. Customized design and graphics by Tara Whittle.