L'Introduction
Bonjour!
This is the first of many posts about project PODARCIS.
PODARCIS is an acronym for Potential Oxygen Limitation of Distributions And Responses to Changing Climates In EctothermS (admittedly a bit of stretch) and also the genus name of a common, widespread, and diverse group of lizards found across much of Europe. This project is a collaboration between me (Eric Gangloff) and Fabien Aubret at the Station d’Ecologie Théorique et Expérimentale (a station of the French government's research center) in Moulis, France. Thanks to a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, I will be here for two years studying the common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis) to understand how this lizard may respond to both a warming climate and the oxygen limitations of living at mountain altitudes.
I am thrilled to be starting this project and working in this beautiful landscape. The aim is to combine measures of physiology, behaviour, and cognition to understand how lizards might be able to respond to changing environments and potentially migrate to higher elevations. This includes measures of how individuals can respond to different environments and how populations might adapt on longer time scales. We will take measurements of lizards from wild populations, then bring both lizards and eggs back to the research labs for different experiments. After collecting our data, we will release all animals back to their homes. I'll cover the experiment details in future posts, but to start here is a photo of a lizard caught on my first day in the field and its typical habitat in this area.
This is the first of many posts about project PODARCIS.
PODARCIS is an acronym for Potential Oxygen Limitation of Distributions And Responses to Changing Climates In EctothermS (admittedly a bit of stretch) and also the genus name of a common, widespread, and diverse group of lizards found across much of Europe. This project is a collaboration between me (Eric Gangloff) and Fabien Aubret at the Station d’Ecologie Théorique et Expérimentale (a station of the French government's research center) in Moulis, France. Thanks to a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, I will be here for two years studying the common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis) to understand how this lizard may respond to both a warming climate and the oxygen limitations of living at mountain altitudes.
I am thrilled to be starting this project and working in this beautiful landscape. The aim is to combine measures of physiology, behaviour, and cognition to understand how lizards might be able to respond to changing environments and potentially migrate to higher elevations. This includes measures of how individuals can respond to different environments and how populations might adapt on longer time scales. We will take measurements of lizards from wild populations, then bring both lizards and eggs back to the research labs for different experiments. After collecting our data, we will release all animals back to their homes. I'll cover the experiment details in future posts, but to start here is a photo of a lizard caught on my first day in the field and its typical habitat in this area.
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| Adult Podarcis muralis from my first day of fieldwork. |
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| Habitat of P. muralis at an elevation of about 900 m. |
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