To defend their territory, many lizards do push-ups. Nelson's knowledge of lizards comes from more than just reading a pile of wildlife textbooks. She's spent hours watching them as part of her work with Mark Andersen, a wildlife scientist with NMSU's Agricultural Experiment Station . The researchers are studying how human disturbance affects lizard populations. The surrounding desert has a rich fauna of lizards.
Lizards are important contributors to ecosystems, especially in arid lands.
They can occur in high densities and are predators of spiders and other arthropods, and prey for larger vertebrates like roadrunners, snakes and small mammals, Andersen said. The researchers are looking at the number and type of lizards in three different geographical areas found in the Las Cruces area. They have seven study plots in areas that are surrounded by human development within the city and seven that are adjacent to development at the city's edges. They also have 14 plots with no development located on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Jornada Experimental Range, about 25 miles northeast of NMSU's main campus. During the summer, each morning from about 7 to noon, Nelson visited the research plots.