Their plan was to travel to southern France to study how a local lizard is responding to climate change.

Though the pandemic prevented Ohio Wesleyan University juniors Sierra Spears of Bowling Green, and
Princeton Vaughn of Maryland along with assistant professor of zoology Eric Gangloff from visiting the
Pyrenees mountains this summer, the quick-thinking trio followed the lizard’s example – and adapted.
In the months since their trip was canceled, the OWU scientists have successfully completed multiple
related research projects that could be conducted without international travel, presented their findings
at the 2021 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting, and begun drafting two papers to
submit to scientific journals.
“Both Princeton and Sierra have been enormously resilient and flexible this past year, qualities that
will undoubtedly serve them well in their future careers,” Gangloff said of his students. “They have
both demonstrated great curiosity in exploring these ideas and creativity in how we can conduct these
experiments.
For Spears, a pre-professional zoology major and chemistry minor, the research pivot meant analyzing data
shared by collaborators in France rather than collecting the information first-hand. In addition to
Gangloff, Spears also worked with OWU sophomore Ciara Pettit of South Euclid, on the project.
Spears’ presentation for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology is titled “Plasticity in
Thermoregulatory Behavior and Performance in Response to Hyperoxia in a High-Elevation Specialist
Lizard, Iberolacerta bonnali.”
The lizards involved “are classified as near-threatened,” she said, “because, unlike lowland species that
can move to properly thermoregulate, high-elevation lizards have nowhere to go as climate warms.”
“Sierra’s work is directly related to climate change,” Gangloff added. “Under climate change scenarios,
we don’t know if the lizards will have anywhere to go if their habitat becomes unsuitable.
“There is a chance they could move down in elevation if they can deal with the warmer temperatures, but
her project shows that they do not do well when transported to lower elevation, at least in the short
term,” Gangloff said. “So her work is addressing fundamental questions about how physiology can respond
to novel conditions, but also questions about conservation for a species of concern.”
Spears said future research in the area will “look deeper into possible physiological explanations like
red blood cell count, reactive oxygen species, or hemoglobin concentrations.”
Spears and Gangloff are in the near-final stages of analyzing data and preparing an article they have
been invited to submit to a special issue of the journal Diversity on the evolutionary ecology of
lizards.
For Vaughn, a zoology major from Bowie, Maryland, the pandemic pivot meant traveling to Cincinnati in
collaboration with Gangloff and OWU junior Wyatt McQueen, of Heath.
Vaughn’s presentation for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology is titled “Location,
Location, Location: Testing the Performance Implications of Morphological Shifts in Introduced Urban
Lizards.”
The Ohio Wesleyan researchers chose Cincinnati, Vaughn said, because a child smuggled 10 common wall
lizards from their home in Italy to Ohio in the 1950s.
“Today, their population has exploded into hundreds of thousands,” he said. Using both museum specimens
and live reptiles, “the goal is to see if and how the invasive (lizard) population has evolved over its
time in the novel habitat of Cincinnati and if those changes might be related to sprint performance.”

Vaughn said he expects future research to explore “how both clinging ability and climbing performance
interact with morphology.”
For now, he is continuing to analyze data and draft (as lead author) an article that he and Gangloff hope
to submit this semester to the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. In addition, Vaughn is working
with OWU faculty member Laura Tuhela-Reuning to use the university’s scanning transmission electron
microscope to examine lizard claws and their climbing/grasping ability.
Gangloff’s own Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology presentation is titled “Adaptation and
Plasticity in the Multivariate Thermal Phenotype of Common Wall Lizards.”
“This is a widespread species found across much of southern Europe, generally at low elevations,” said
Gangloff, who joined the Ohio Wesleyan faculty in 2019. “However, in recent years as temperatures have
warmed, this species has been observed moving up in elevation to track these preferred thermal
environments.”
As they move higher, he said, the lizards face issues such as less oxygen, and his collaborative project
explores how the reptiles respond to the change in elevation. The goal is to determine what
environments, currently not inhabited by the lizards, may be suitable for them during continued climate
change.
In addition to presenting their work at the 2021 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting,
Spears and Vaughn also presented earlier versions of their findings at Ohio Wesleyan’s Summer Science
Research Symposium in September.