Observing lizards during lockdown Last year while we were in lockdown, I did a STEM project and entered it in the Wyvern P&F STEM Fest and the Science Teachers’ Association of New South Wales’ Young Scientist competition. Thomas using Excel to graph the number of lizards basking I am really interested in lizards, so I decided to investigate whether theor eating at various temperatures. temperature of the ground affects when lizards come out to eat. The first thing I did was learn how to identify the different types of I concluded that the reason the skinks have a preferred activity lizards. I found out there were three types of small skinks in my street:temperature is because below 26 degrees they are too cold to move a garden skink, a fence skink and grass skink. properly and above 40 degrees it is getting too hot to survive. Every morning, lunch time and afternoon for the next three weeks Most of the lizards I saw eating were eating little moths, so I made a I stealthily walked around my garden and up the street looking for decoy moth out of paper and tied it to a stick with a piece of cotton. lizards. Every time I saw one, I used an infrared thermometer to I discovered that lots of the lizards chased my decoy. This made me measure the temperature of the ground where it was basking. In the think if there were lots of moths, I might have seen lots of lizards end I measured the basking temperature of 331 lizards and observed feeding. It also made me realise that little skinks in my street are sit- 24 lizards eating. and-wait predators. Next, I tallied up my results and learnt how to make a graph with Excel.Finally, I had great fun doing my investigation. I want to thank my dad and my grandfather for their help. Grandpa used to be a science My graph showed that most lizards preferred to come out and bask professor and last year he had to move into aged care. I Zoomed him between 26 and 40 degrees. The graph also showed that the lizards at night to tell him how I was going, and it gave us all something to preferred to eat at the same temperatures cheer us up in lockdown. It was also a better way to use the infrared thermometer than pointing it at people’s foreheads. Lizards are cold blooded which means they get their heat from their surroundings. The scientific word for this is ‘ectothermic’. Thomas McCloskey 5B Thomas determining the surface temperature near a lizard.