Lizards and Friends
A website about lizards, scientists who study lizards, and kids who think lizards are cool!
Blog!
It’s been an amazing summer, here in the Lizard Lab! We have learned a lot of new things (see here and here), thought about new ideas to test, collected the data to see if those ideas are right (see here, here, and[…]
This summer, we were lucky to have two high school interns work with us in the Lizard Lab! One of those interns, Riann, wrote about her time in the lab. Read on to see what she learned, and for her advice[…]
This summer the Lizard Lab, or as I like to call them, the team, and I have been working really hard. Between taking care of all our lizards and making progress on our own projects, our work is never done![…]
In the Lizard Lab, we all devote time every week to taking care of the lizards in the lab. Everyone shares this responsibility. (In fact, we even have a lab calendar to remind us whose turn it is to do[…]
Hey everyone! My name is Adam, and I’ve worked in the Lizard Lab for just over a year. Most of the time, the students in the lab work on our own research projects, but last week our lab had a[…]
Hey everybody – it’s Miguel again! A few weeks ago, I told you about how we cut pieces of brain and muscle tissue into tiny pieces, and then put them on microscope slides (click here to read that post). The next step[…]
![DSCN0549[1]](http://lizardsandfriends.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/DSCN05491-455x341.jpg)
Hello, everyone! My name is Hannah, and I recently returned from a field trip with the Lizard Lab. We went together to Corpus Christi, Texas where we spent two days exploring the beautiful South Texas Botanical Gardens and studying the[…]
Have you ever wondered how scientists are able to look at cells under a microscope? One way is to use a special machine called a cryostat, which cuts pieces of brain or muscle into super-thin slices. (Jake recently wrote a post[…]
Hi! My name is Amy, and I’m the new member of the Lizard Lab. Right now, I spend most of my time helping out on little projects, and learning as much as I can about the way things work here in[…]
Hey everybody! We are excited to introduce a new series on our blog: A summer of science: real stories from a lizard lab. The goal of this series is to give you a peek into what it’s really like to[…]
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)
Connecting lizard and mealworm biology
(DOC // PDF)
How do animals communicate when they can’t talk? by Dr. Thom Sanger of Loyola University
(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, 2015–
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.