Lizard Camp

The goal of lizard camp is to provide hands on training that enables students from underrepresented backgrounds to learn how to be a scientist.

We recruit teams of undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, and graduate students to work as a team to study lizards in desert ecosystems around the world! The teams develop questions and methods for the particular ecosystem of interest, and then learn how to analyze the data and present the answers they find to a broad audience. 

Marfa public radio story about this years lizard camp! 

Past lizard camps

Results from past lizard camps 

• Great Basin Desert, SE Oregon 2017: 8 students participated investigating how foraging mode influenced movement and habitat use in two sympatric lizard species (McAlpine et al. in review; results presented at SICB 2018)

• Chihuahuan Desert, Colorado 2018: 12 students participated on project devoted to delineating the influence of habitat structure on movement dynamics (Utsumi et al. 2019).

• Chihuahuan Desert, Colorado 2019: 13 student participants examined the difference between youngsters and adults in where and how they move (Kusaka et al. 2021).

• Great Basin Desert, Oregon 2020—10 students participated in project focusing on the social networks and space use of 2 sympatric lizards with different foraging modes (manuscripts in preparation).