One more Greek field season

-- Colin Donihue PhD candidate

It's hard to believe but I'm sitting on the island of Naxos straightening out logistics for my final field season in Greece! This is my fourth summer in the Cyclades and so far I've managed to avoid all of the logistical mistakes of previous years. I suppose the benefit of experience is the thrill of making brand new mistakes! Now that research equipment is all in one place, I'm pretty well settled in the 15th century castle I'm calling home for the next two months. (yeah, I really  lucked out on that front!) 

This summer is going to be all about filling in the blanks. My field assistants and I had an epic field season last year which has put me pretty close to the mark for data collection. A  winter's worth of data analysis though brought up some new questions about my little lizards, so that's the goal for this summer. 

Right now I'm working on untangling some inter-island differences in lizard bite force - an important lizard trait related to both diet and competition. I'm also finding some strong inter-population context-dependence on the big island of Naxos. I'll save the punchline for after the data is in one place, but I'm hoping this summer to be able to tie together a story about lizard hunting mode, morphology, performance, and behavior across the Greek landscape. 

I'm also working hard to share stories and pictures from the field. I'll be updating my personal blog as often as possible. Find it here. Or find me on Twitter or Instagram under @colindonihue.