How lizards move through and partition space — and what those decisions reveal about behavior, ecology, and evolution.
A central strand of Erell Institute research tracks how lizards use space across a range of desert systems — from the Namib and Kalahari to the Chihuahuan and Gobi deserts. By applying consistent methods (step-length analysis, home-range estimation, path tortuosity) across species and sites, the program builds a comparative picture of how habitat, body size, phylogeny, and social context shape individual movement decisions.
The 2025 Lizard Camp field season field-tested step-selection analysis using drone-acquired imagery to characterize fine-scale habitat structure at individual GPS fixes. This approach allows movement data and habitat data to be collected at the same spatial and temporal resolution — closing a long-standing methodological gap in lizard movement ecology.
Multiple projects have documented how movement characteristics vary within a single species by sex, age class, and individual identity. Work on species including Meroles anchietae, Phrynocephalus versicolor, and Aspidoscelis inornatus reveals that intraspecific variation in movement can be as large as interspecific variation — with implications for how we interpret species-level movement summaries.