Mississippi – Field Talk /fieldtalk audio interviews take you into the field with ecologists Wed, 18 Dec 2013 01:13:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 Lizard Evolution and the Ants In Your Pants Dance /fieldtalk/field-talk-lizard-evolution-and-the-ants-in-your-pants-dance/ /fieldtalk/field-talk-lizard-evolution-and-the-ants-in-your-pants-dance/#respond Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:29:52 +0000 http://172468002/ … Read more ›]]> Invasive red fire ants from South America have become a major pest in southwestern U.S., bringing their stinging venom and crop-destroying ways. In this edition of Field Talk, we catch up with Tracy Langkilde, assistant professor of biology at Penn State University, who studies one of the ants’ seemingly unlikely targets: eastern fence lizards. The lizards have evolved a novel twitching response that flicks attacking ants off their bodies. But in her paper in the January issue of Ecology, Dr. Langkilde explains that since native ants don’t normally attack lizards, this behavior must have evolved in a very short time.

 

Tracy Langkilde

Ecology 2009 90:1, 208-217

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