Anna Thonis, PhD 🦎

A common little cutie in San Diego! Western fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis)

I will DM you :) thanks!!!

Does anyone have recommendations for cellular GPS tags (GPS + GSM) for box turtles? I want to be able to have the data sent to me remotely via a cellular network. Needs to weigh 20-30g or less. These would be attached to box turtle shells with epoxy.

The only native anole species in the US, Anolis carolinensis! I haven't actually caught carolinensis since I was a kid visiting the Florida Everglades with my parents, so it's been a minute!

🦎🦎🦎

An estimated 15.7 million workers use SNAP. It’s a lifeline for those in low-wage jobs.

Meanwhile, CEOs are paid 280x as much as the typical worker.

Don’t be angry at workers for using food stamps.

Be angry at the corporations paying them so little that they need them.

Got to assist with my labmate's urban pigeon gut microbiome research yesterday in the Bronx!

If you think that professors exist as repositories of knowledge that students ask for answers, you’re missing the entire point of a college education.

We’re here to teach students how to do research, how to analyze and argue, how to think for themselves — how to find the answers on their own.

Thank you so much ☺️🦎

Oftentimes, yes. This time, no haha it just happened to work out. I'm only in PR for two days for the PR Herpetological Symposium and these nails are two weeks old but I didn't have time to do a new set before I left! I do them myself so each set takes me like 3-4 hours haha

Yellow-chinned anole (Anolis gundlachi) from Bosque de Carite 🤎

On my way to the Puerto Rico Herpetological Symposium! Excited to present some of my work on anoles and urbanization for the first time!! And also to see the talks being given by a bunch of my former students💗🦎☺️

My most perfect boy

Had the cool opportunity to talk about lizards and turtles in Central Park for Soapbox Science today!

Yesterday during wall lizard fieldwork, some very kind NYS Parks employees taught us how to tag monarch butterflies 😊🦋

A large male wall lizard from today's sampling on the north fork of Long Island! Stopped for hot apple cider and cider donuts post fieldwork🦎😊

Haha of course!!!

I guess you specifically said snakes - sorry! But same answer ultimately applies. Like there may be some studies showing individual snake species increasing in overall size (I would have to do some digging), but I don't believe any evidence backs that it is happening for all snake species.

To the best of my knowledge, no evidence suggests that anthropogenic/modern-day climate change is driving overall increases in reptile body size (like in the clade overall), however some studies have found overall increases for specific species. Some studies have also said that reptiles will shrink!

Back to catching Italian wall lizards (Podarcis siculus) in NY!

Tegu time!!

I'm recruiting a PhD student to join the lab at @gtsciences.bsky.social in Fall 2026! Broad taxonomic and topical freedom under the umbrella of vertebrate joint form and function. Information here: www.manafzadeh.com – please share 🦴🩻

Cool research on anoles and urbanization!!

The NYU lizard colony (@kmwinchell.bsky.social) is now one step closer to being up and running! Today we finished these 56 lizard "condos" which can individually house 224 lizards! This has been a massive effort, and we are so excited to have reached this milestone🦎 We are so close to anoles at NYU!

They're the best!

Eek so cute!!

Garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) near Ithaca, NY 🐍

Wepaaa!!

One week ago, we wrapped up another successful field season in Puerto Rico! We completed the 8th season of my mark-recapture surveys for three species of Puerto Rican anole. We also added another 10 sites to our PR anole niche space project, bringing our total to 30 sites.

Yay data! Yay anoles! 🦎🦎

Although totally not important for what I actually work on, I am now very good at snagging baby iguanas out of bushes.

Managed to lasso this stunning Puerto Rican blue-tailed ameiva (Pholidoscelis wetmorei) yesterday! 🦎💙