NATURE'S MAPPERS

Reptiles show an ability fo understand and remember spaces, which makes them a natural insect pest controller

- DEYATIMA GHOSH

CAN YOU see it?” I asked my fellow researcher one evening in the summer of 2022. “Not yet,” the researcher replied, “but I am sure it is hiding somewhere inside. There is no way for it to escape.”

The two of us, along with three other researchers, were looking for Dritto, a male garden lizard (Calotes versicolor) that had escaped from our experimental plot at the campus of the Gandhi Krishi Vigyana Kendra in Bengaluru. I was certain that the lizard had escaped from the fenced plot.

For the last five days, the lizard had been frequenting one area of the plot. We suspected that it had found a way out through here. Dritto eventually returned to the plot, but five days later, it escaped again. This time, we confirmed its escape route. This indicated that in the three months since it was under observation, the lizard had gained a spatial understanding of the plot.

Dritto was one of the nine garden lizards my team and I had been studying as part of a project with The Rufford Foundation, UK, to understand how the spatial learning abilities of reptiles help them forage for food. The fenced plot, a 2 m by 2 m vegetable cropland, was divided into patches with different pest infestations. We explored whether the lizards would be able to identify patches based on the location of pests. The results showed that reptiles indeed had the ability to choose a “better” foraging patch and remember it.