When Alex Gunderson arrived in New Orleans in 2018, he expected a change in scenery. What he didn’t anticipate was being part of a discovery so strange it would challenge parts of environmental toxicology, and, just as unexpectedly, finding a second home on a comedy stage.
Today, the Tulane University evolutionary biologist is known for two things that rarely share a sentence: his lab’s groundbreaking research into lead-resistant lizards and his improvisational science show, Nerd Night, where scientists and comedians share the same spotlight. Both reflect what drives Gunderson most: curiosity, creativity, and the ability to find connection, even humor, in the messiness of the natural world.
From Iron Country to the Bayou
Gunderson grew up in northern Minnesota, “in a small iron ore mining town near the Canadian border,” as he puts it. His father ran hunting and fishing lodges, and his mother taught elementary school.
“I spent a lot of time in the outdoors when I was growing up,” he recalled. “I did a lot of fishing and hunting and things like that. I actually worked as a fishing guide for a while in Minnesota. That sparked my interest in starting to think about, how does nature work?”
His path to science wasn’t a direct one. He attended community college before transferring to Minnesota State University, where a biology course lit the spark. Fieldwork quickly became his favorite: in Montana, he studied reptiles and amphibians; in the Galápagos, he observed seabirds; in New Mexico, he trapped small mammals to measure owl food supply for an endangered species recovery project.
Those experiences cemented his sense of science as both adventure and detective work, the kind that begins out in the dirt, not the lab. He went on to earn a master’s at the College of William and Mary, studying bacteria that live on bird feathers, and then a PhD at Duke University, where he began working with anole lizards, the tiny, quick, color-shifting reptiles that would eventually make him famous.
“We Don’t Know How They’re Doing It”
Fast forward to 2025. In a lab tucked inside Tulane’s School of Science and Engineering, Gunderson and his PhD student Annelise Blanchette made a discovery.
Their study, published in Environmental Research, revealed that brown anole lizards living in New Orleans carried the highest blood-lead levels ever recorded in a vertebrate, levels that would be lethal to almost any other animal. Some lizards had blood lead concentrations exceeding 3,000 micrograms per deciliter, where even 100 can kill a mammal.
And yet, they were fine.
“What’s astonishing is that these lizards aren’t just surviving, they’re thriving with a lead burden that would be catastrophic for most other animals,” Gunderson told Tulane News.
Tests of balance, speed, and endurance, all abilities typically wrecked by lead poisoning, showed no decline. Blanchette and Gunderson even exposed other lizards to 10 times the field concentration in controlled experiments before they saw any performance drop-off.
“They seem unaffected by it,” Gunderson said in our interview. “Where other animals, certainly humans, would be dead at those levels, these lizards are fine.”
The team’s genetic analysis pointed to possible biological defenses. The lizards seemed to upregulate genes associated with oxygen transport, increasing hemoglobin production to compensate for lead’s anemia-inducing effects. Other genes involved in metal ion movement and cellular transport were also active. But the exact mechanism remains a mystery.
“We have some little clues here and there,” Gunderson said, “but in general, we don’t know how they’re doing it.”
The implications go far beyond reptiles.
“If we can figure out what’s protecting them,” Gunderson explained, “we might uncover strategies that could help mitigate heavy metal poisoning in people and other species.”
For all the intrigue, the study also serves as a warning. The lizards’ resilience underscores just how pervasive lead contamination remains in New Orleans. Decades after the use of leaded gasoline and paint was banned, the soil, especially in older neighborhoods, still bears the toxic legacy of industry and neglect.
“It’s not just a wildlife issue,” Gunderson said. “It’s a human health issue.”
Multiple Stressors
This intersection between environmental pollution and adaptation lies at the heart of Gunderson’s new work as a ByWater Institute Fellow. His fellowship project, Facing the Problem of Multiple Environmental Stressors in New Orleans through Student Research, Academic Lecture, and Theater Performance, asks how organisms, and by extension, people, cope when the challenges they face stack up.
“New Orleans is incredibly hot and polluted due to a long history of trade and industry,” he wrote in his proposal. “It exhibits one of the largest urban heat island effects in the United States, and it also has very high levels of pollution with toxic heavy metals such as lead. This is particularly worrying because of the ‘multiple stressor’ problem: the effect of one stressor is often amplified by the presence of another.”
His project addresses this from two directions - one scientific, one cultural.
The first is a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE), where students study how lizards respond to both heat and pollution across different landscapes. Using Uptown New Orleans (high lead) and A Studio in the Woods outside New Orleans(low lead) as their field sites, they collect environmental data, measure body temperatures, and observe behavior. Blood samples are analyzed at the Louisiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab to quantify lead exposure.
“It’s important to experience science, not just read about it,” Gunderson said. “Science isn’t a collection of facts, it’s a process. You should go out, collect data, test your ideas, and see what happens.”
Students then analyze their data and present it through conference-style talks, posters, or even zines.
“The fellowship made it possible to add the lead analysis,” Gunderson wrote, “which is expensive but transformative for the students’ learning.”
The second project is about communication—translating science into something people can feel.
The Science of Connection
When Gunderson isn’t in the lab or the field, he’s often at Big Couch Theater, a brick-walled comedy venue in the Bywater neighborhood. There, he hosts Nerd Night, a live show where scientists give short, digestible talks and improv comedians create spontaneous sketches inspired by their stories.
“It’s really important that scientists communicate with people who aren’t scientists,” Gunderson said. “But it has to be in a way that’s not a drag—that doesn’t feel like you’re going to school.”
Nerd Night uses a performance style called the Armando, where a monologist tells a story, and the troupe builds improvised scenes from the ideas and emotions it sparks, not literal reenactments.
“The comedians don’t make fun of the scientists or the serious issues,” Gunderson said. “They identify something that inspires them and translate it into a different, more humorous context.”
The show, which he describes as “TED Talks meets Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” has featured researchers from across disciplines, ecologists, allergists, and public health scientists, talking about everything from mosquito-borne diseases to plant genetics.
For Gunderson, who grew up around what he calls “a lot of funny people,” humor is more than a pastime. “If you come from an area that’s cold a lot of the time, kind of economically depressed,” he said, “there’s a sense of humor that comes with that, maybe even a dark sense of humor. You just joke about everything. It’s how you deal with everything.”
Teaching Curiosity
Gunderson’s teaching philosophy, like his science and his comedy, centers on curiosity as a communal act. In his ecology courses, students conduct hands-on fieldwork, often trekking through swamps at night to study frogs, salamanders, and alligators. He asks them to turn off their flashlights and sit in the dark for five minutes, just listening.
“Students invariably say they’ve never experienced anything like that,” he said. “It really changes how they think about nature.”
That sense of wonder, he believes, is the key to both science and empathy. His ByWater fellowship brings that full circle: a union of research, teaching, and creative communication that blurs the lines between laboratory, classroom, and stage.
“It’s all about connection,” Gunderson said. “Connecting students to nature, connecting scientists to the public, connecting knowledge to emotion. Humor just happens to be one of the best tools for that.”
In the end, Gunderson’s story mirrors that of the creatures he studies - adaptable, resilient, and full of surprises. His work with lead-tolerant lizards challenges what we know about life’s limits; his performances challenge how we think about science itself.
In a city where both contamination and creativity run deep, Gunderson’s blend of field boots and stage lights feels almost poetic: a reminder that the pursuit of understanding doesn’t have to be solemn. It can be strange, communal. Yes, even funny.
“Science,” he said, “is serious work. But that doesn’t mean it can’t also be joyful.”