New school year. New chance to push the limits of science education.

Last year The Lizard Project was a resounding success. We pushed the limits of science education. The partnership we had with Dr. Warner and Iowa State University could stand as a new model for science education in high school classrooms as well as a new model for education outreach for research scientists. We are currently working vary hard to publish our findings, that a female's nesting choices have significant effects on her offspring across multiple life stages, in a major scientific journal. Although the students involved with the project could already tell you what an impact it had on their learning, getting it published will be a nice way of telling the wider scientific and education communities what kids are capable of when you set the bar higher than it has ever been before. This type of science in a high school classroom would be nearly unheard of even in the most elite and wealthy high schools in the country. I am extremely proud that we achieved this at Kelly High School, where more than 90% of our students are designated as low income. So what are we up to this year? Well we have two major grants pending that could support some great projects this year. One would support an in class project that would give kids unprecedented creative freedom to design their own behavioral experiments with live animals. The other would allow us to bring even more field experiences to our students via live Skype chats from our island research sites along the Florida Atlantic coast. Oh, and we are still working on a documentary film about The Lizard Project. Check back for more updates soon.

OPPORTUNITY FOR MY FORMER STUDENTS

Were you inspired to learn by following Dr. Warner and me as we worked in Florida? Did you feel like the blog and the live Skype chats helped bring you closer to science in the wider world? If you said yes, You might have the chance to be in a commercial for Sprint where you talk about how technology helped you learn and inspired you!

If you are interested, email me at aaronmreedy@gmail as soon as possible and I will put you in touch with casting.

Learning by doing.

Salvador and the other high school students here at TREE have been busy designing and carrying out their own research projects in the field. In the picture above Sal is radio tracking western hognose snakes to study the home range of this little studied species. This is the kind of thing that really gets kids hooked on science and is hard to replicate in the classroom. Here is what he has to say about the experience:

The past three days here at TREE have been very interesting. I have met new people and made a couple of friends. TREE is a very cool program because I get to experience the science of biology, first hand. I don’t have to worry about anything here but just the projects that I am working on. There are three types of teams; the Trapping team, the Sand Prairie team, and the Predation type. Every team focuses on different side projects that revolve around Turtle camp. For my first year I have chosen, the Sand Prairie team. We focus on reptiles in the prairie such as Ornate Box Turtles, Hognose snakes, and the Six-lined Racerunners. My team members and I have developed an experiment to find out where Hognose snakes spend their time. To do this we are using a tracking device to follow them. The weather has not been the best but it has only been my third day. I can’t wait for what is in store for our team and what other animals we will get to see.

TREE- A science immersion program for high school students.

For the next 2 weeks I am fortunate enough to be a part of the Turtle Research Ecology and Education (TREE) program. I like to think of this as a science immersion program. For two weeks high school students camp on an island in the Mississippi River, and live and work along side professional scientists, grad students and undergrads as they study the nesting ecology of turtles. While at TREE students develop their own study questions and design studies of the local turtle,snake and lizard populations. They carry out their research and present their findings at a US Fish & Wildlife office nearby. This program works so well because kids live, eat and breath science 24 hours a day while they are here.

What have we been up to this year? Lizards (and an innovative way to teach kids to think and act like scientists)! A recap of The Lizard Project.

This year we tried to do something that is rarely done in high school science classrooms. We did science! With the help of the National Science Foundation and our friends Dr. Fred Janzen and Dr. Dan Warner at Iowa State University, we conducted research in ecology and evolution at the level of rigor practiced by professional scientists. Our research aimed to answer the basic questions of: "For animals that lay eggs, how do mothers choose nesting sites?" and "What effect does that choice have on the physical traits of her offspring?". We used 80 brown anole lizards in 20 different enclosures (although our project grew as babies hatched!) for our experiments and throughout the project we emphasized that our questions are questions to which no one (not even an expert evolutionary biologist) has the answers to for our study species. These are the kinds of questions which working scientists work to answer.

We used the entire experiment as the framework for learning the scientific method. Students identified a hypothesis and variables in the experiment. In our first experiment, we presented the female lizards (who were housed with males to ensure eggs) with choices in the types of locations available to lay their eggs. We presented the moms-to-be with five carefully measured levels of soil moisture, both with and without plants.

Then once a week, the students in my five classes carefully sifted through all of the soil to search for jelly bean sized eggs and record the choices that the females had made as well as the mass of each egg.

For our second experiment, each egg that was found was assigned to soil with a randomly chosen moisture content. The moisture content for the soils in the incubator were the same as the five moisture choices the females had in their cages. This allowed us to collect data on how the choices the mother made (and didn't make) could have affected her offspring. Once the lizards were hatched (they are about thumbnail sized and cute as can be) we measured their size and growth carefully to see if its incubation conditions had an effect on its physical attributes.

This was a powerful learning experience for me and my students. My students and I produced products at different levels to show our learning and communicate our findings. My sophomore biology students produced lab reports, my senior zoology students produced papers in the format of a peer reviewed scientific journal and I am currently working on a paper for publication in a peer reviewed journal.

We are looking forward to producing a movie for classroom use with footage from the the lizards' wild habitat and in the classroom to share our experiences and give teachers and students exciting material to teach and learn the scientific method and data analysis. Stay tuned for more!

Keep reading to learn about The Lizard Project in the field in the estuary ecosystems of central Florida.

What science did you do down there? (Click on the photo below for a slideshow of the field work.)

April Field work at Tomoka & Matanzas, Florida

Click on the picture in this post to see a slideshow of more pictures from the field.

So as you know we had 3 different hypothesis that we were testing during our time in the field down in Florida. I want to review each of those hypothesis and let you know what we did to collect data to test each one.

#1) The Brown Anole population faces different relative selection pressures in different parts of the environment.

To test this one we put out 50 clay models in 5 locations that were carefully chosen (forest, park, residential area, beach and island) and recorded all bites in the models from predators and lizards. We only got one lizard bite but we got many predator bites. We tried putting out models with and without paper dewlaps. After the first week we moved the models to new but similar locations. We also took careful photos of the shade cover where each model was placed. A computer will analyze these photos and we will check to see if the amount of cover above a model affected how often it was attacked by predators.

#2) Morphological (physical) differences exist in the lizards in different parts of the habitat.

To test this one we planned to measure hundreds of lizards (we measured more than 800) and record careful data about the locations they were spotted in. Unfortunately this part of the project suffered a bit from our high work load. We did not have time to measure carefully the locations of each captured lizard. However, we do have careful measurements for each lizard in our island experiment so when we go back to collect lizards again we will be able to see if physical differences begin to exist on the different experimental islands.

•#3 Biased Operational sex ratios will affect population growth and natural selection (evolution).

To test this hypothesis we released 835 lizards on 9 different islands. The islands were not all the same size so we released them in numbers that kept population densities (lizards per square meter) the same. On 4 of the islands we released 66.6% males and 33.3% females. On 5 other islands we did the opposite. We will be going back at the end of the summer to catch babies and record population sizes. We will take DNA samples of all the new hatchlings and compare them to the DNA of the founding populations to see which males and females are having the most reproductive success.

Fine looking female and a handsome dude.

One of the questions that you guys asked was- "How do we tell the differences between male and female lizards?"

Many of you already know if you were part of our class in the first semester because we handled so many lizards in our experiment. However, if you don't know or even if you do know and just like seeing pictures of lizards, here are two photos showing fine looking examples of both a female and a male. The female is the one with the diamond pattern on her back and the male is the larger one with the little yellow spots on his side.