COMPLEX LIVES OF REPTILES
B I OLO G IST UNCOV ERS TH E NESTI NG HABI TS A ND C O MPLE X S OCIAL LIVES OF REPTI L ES Sarah Sell
Growing up in Louisiana, Sean Doody loved to explore the woods and catch animals, especially amphibians and reptiles. He would return muddy and bring whatever creatures he found inside the house to study them. “I used to come home with these giant salamanders that I found in ditches. They look like an eel with tiny feet. I used to bring them home and keep them in an aquarium and feed them worms and things. Visitors either found them really cool or really gross,” Doody said. His fascination with herpetology eventually led to a career in conservation biology. Now an assistant professor and graduate director of integrative biology at the USF St. Petersburg campus, Doody’s work has taken him halfway around the world to study poisonous toads and giant lizards. The ten years of research led by Doody recently revealed that the monitor lizard in Australia should be regarded as an “ecosystem engineer,” a rarity for reptiles.
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Tortoises and sea turtles were previously the only reptiles considered to be ecosystem engineers, a term used to describe organisms that have a great impact on their environment based on their ability to create, modify, maintain or destroy a habitat. Doody, along with his colleagues, discovered that in Australia, small animal communities rely on the monitor lizards’ burrow system, called a warren, using it as a habitat, a place to forage for food and nesting. In his study, published in Ecology, Doody and his Australian collaborators investigated the nesting biology of the yellow-spotted monitor lizard, which can measure nearly five feet, and its smaller, sister species, the Gould’s monitor lizard. The team had recently discovered that the lizards are unique because they lay their eggs as deep as 13 feet, easily the deepest vertebrate nests on earth. They loosen the soil, creating warm, moist conditions ideal for laying eggs and trapping viable seeds and fruits. But now, the researchers have discovered that the burrows hosted a
