Jon Milgrom '08 spent his summer living amid reptiles. Milgrom and Visiting Professor of Biology Peter Zani engaged in a non-traditional summer project. Milgrom was awarded the Renwick Prize in Biology, which supports summer scholarship in biology and Zani was conducting research on behavioral responses of lizards to a snake predator.
Milgrom traveled to Burns, Oregon, in June and spent the entire month helping catch lizards (and avoiding rattlesnakes). "Each day we would catch lizards during the morning and early afternoon and then run experiments on lizard endurance (by putting them on a small treadmill) and process our catch until evening," Zani explained. "With Jon's help I was able to catch and mark 509 lizards this summer. In addition, we saw as many as 67 snakes in one day, including 28 rattlesnakes."
Milgrom's project focused on the behavior of lizards in response to snakes, which are major predators. Zani said, "We had a fake rubber snake that we mounted on a golf-club shaft, would approach a lizard with the snake, and record where it ran and how fast. We were testing the idea that lizards utilize the nearby cliffs as a refuge from snakes, which can't climb. Just as predicted," Zani said, "lizards almost always ran toward the cliff and escaped by running over and down its sheer face." Milgrom is working on these data for his senior thesis in biology, a year early.
Zani and Milgrom will present their research at the meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Phoenix in January.
Milgrom traveled to Burns, Oregon, in June and spent the entire month helping catch lizards (and avoiding rattlesnakes). "Each day we would catch lizards during the morning and early afternoon and then run experiments on lizard endurance (by putting them on a small treadmill) and process our catch until evening," Zani explained. "With Jon's help I was able to catch and mark 509 lizards this summer. In addition, we saw as many as 67 snakes in one day, including 28 rattlesnakes."
Milgrom's project focused on the behavior of lizards in response to snakes, which are major predators. Zani said, "We had a fake rubber snake that we mounted on a golf-club shaft, would approach a lizard with the snake, and record where it ran and how fast. We were testing the idea that lizards utilize the nearby cliffs as a refuge from snakes, which can't climb. Just as predicted," Zani said, "lizards almost always ran toward the cliff and escaped by running over and down its sheer face." Milgrom is working on these data for his senior thesis in biology, a year early.
Zani and Milgrom will present their research at the meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Phoenix in January.
