Eugenia Zarza
@eugeniazarza
Researcher @ECOSUR, Mexico. Interested in studying biodiversity, evolution, bioinformatics; IUCN Iguana Specialist Group
The tectonic plates under my feet have been very active! We have had 1473 aftershocks following the M7.1 earthquake on July 17. 😬🌎
Crazy seismic activity this morning : a strong 7.4 earthquake followed by three aftershocks between 4.5 - 6.5. Too much adrenaline!
Happy World Snake Day! Sharing this tiny beautiful blind snake - possibly an introduced Indotyphlops, the smallest snake species (5 - 10 cm) 🧪🌎🐍
Finishing our bioinformatics course at ECOSUR! We got a group of students with a wide range of interests: native bee and earthworm gut microbiota, orchid genetics, bacterial diversity in water 🧬🧪👩🏽💻🇲🇽
My colleagues from the Iguana Specialist Group created these cool cards with Iguanas from countries playing in the current tournament. Today's match: Galápagos pink land iguana (Ecuador) vs Oaxacan spiny-tailed iguana (Mexico)! 🦎🧪⚽
I couldn’t get any closer to this Black iguana male to get a better pic. Can you see the female’s head sticking out from the grass?
Surviving the last meeting of the day after two very busy weeks of marking course work, preparing and submitting CV for an important evaluation and organizing my son’s birthday party … I want my cat’s lifestyle 👩🏽🔬
Happy that we finally produced some data with the @nanoporetech.com Minion in our lab! It took months of admin and logistics. Now we know the path, hope it’s easier next time. This is my student showing some genera that are part of the black iguana microbiome! 🦎🦠🧬🧪
Working hard on International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Lucky to have the opportunity to study lots of animal species, their DNA, and even their bacteria! #11F 🧬🦎🐜🦠🧪👩🏽🔬
Buscamos personas interesad@s en estudiar la biodiversidad de eucariontes con métodos basados en DNA ambiental #eDNA. Consulta la convocatoria de maestría en ECOSUR (México): www.ecosur.mx/posgrado/con... Para más información contacta a Dra. Eugenia Zarza: eugenia.zarza@ecosur.mx 🧪🌎🧬🐟🐜🪲🪱🍄🐭
I was happy to see my two favourite volcanoes again: Popocatepetl (left, active, 5,393 m, Smoking Mountain in Nahuatl) and Iztaccíhuatl (right, dormant, 5,230 m, White Woman in Nahuatl). However it’s worrying that the glaciers are quickly disappearing 🗻🇲🇽 #climatechange
Merry Christmas from Axolotl lake, Xochimilco 🇲🇽. Sadly very few axolotls are left in the wild. We visited an “ajolotario” and saw these two cute guys. 🌎🐸
My first PhD student graduated! I’m proud of his work on wastewater viral metagenomics! He detected a wide diversity of plant viruses in our tropical region. 🧪🧬🦠🌱
Went for a run early enough to catch the Tacaná volcano silhouette against the sunrise colours. It is an active volcano but it has been calm for almost 40 years, I hope it continues like that 🌋🇲🇽
Day of the Dead altars in the lab, honouring some of the scientists we lost this and past years. 🇲🇽💀🧪👩🏽🔬
Worried about the people in Jamaica. I'm also worried about the only surviving wild population of the critically endangered Jamaica rock iguanas (Cyclura collei), I hope they find a place to hide. 🦎🌎🧪
Estamos organizando la primera Olimpiada Nacional de Zoología en México, dirigida a estudiantes de licenciatura de Biología y carreras afines. Más info: instagram.com/olimpiadas.zoo www.facebook.com/share/p/1KYD... 🧪🦎🐟🦊🦉🦋🪱🐸🐜🐌🪸🦣
We had a great time yesterday in the main Science outreach event in our institution, “ECOSUR a Puertas abiertas”, 🇲🇽. We received around 1000 people! My students were super enthusiastic sharing info about eDNA! 🧬🧪👩🏽🔬
My favourite reptiles: They live in amazing places e.g. Baja California and the Galapagos islands, they’re seed dispersers, some are fragile other very resilient, culturally important but threatened by habitat loss, trafficking, hunting. Today is Iguana awareness day! Photo:IIF 🌎🦎
Sharing a video of Catemaco 🇲🇽 for #WorldLakeDay, surrounded by the volcanic Sierra de Los Tuxtlas and some patches of the original rainforest. It’s one of the sampling sites in our eDNA project.
We heard howling monkeys for days in Palenque 🇲🇽 and we finally saw one! This national park protects amazing nature and impressive Mayan temples. 🐒
Very happy that after travelling 368 km (2x) to the ‘local’ Environment and Natural Resources office +3 months wait, my student got his collection permits approved! We’ll catch Ctenosaura similis for his master’s project on spiny-tailed iguana’s gut microbiome. 🧬🧪🦎🌎