B&N Outreach

On Sunday, both our lizard and snake teams participated in a community outreach event at Barnes and Noble in Tucson, AZ. The members of the Lizard Urban Ecology Project presented a poster about the research that they have been working on this semester, and showed off a juvenile Desert Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus magister).  Later that evening, the members of the Stone Canyon Project brought several different snake species and a Gila Monster (Heloderma Suspectum) to show to the public. They had three different types of rattlesnakes: a Western Diamondback (Crotalus atrox), a Tiger Rattlesnake (Crotalus tigris), a Black-tailed Rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus); and two Common Kingsnakes (Lampropeltis getula). The undergraduates used this as an opportunity to teach the visitors about the differences between venomous and nonvenomous snakes, the basic ecology of each species, and the research that they do at Stone Canyon. The students had fun teaching members of the Tucson community about reptiles and the visitors seemed to enjoy handling the nonvenomous species as well as feeling the Gila Monster!