AnaLau Cavazos
Research Overview
My name is AnaLau Cavazos and I was Dr. Feria’s student and mentee. I met her in 2011 and was fortunate enough to work in 3 research projects with her. The first being Chagas disease, where I helped collect specimens, create ecological maps and learned how to perform molecular analysis on vectors to analyze potential distribution of disease in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The second project was assessing the risk of Lyme disease due to climate change distribution of vector tick Ixodes scapularis. While collaborating with other universities we published our finding for this research in the journal Parasite & Vectors. Lastly, we worked together with Mexico’s Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO) and created ecological maps for 22 endemic hummingbird species using statistical programs SPSS to analyze real and potential distribution of species. With Dr. Feria’s collaboration and help, I was able to present 4 posters in various conferences like Texas Academy of Science, Ecological Society of America and UTPA’s Annual Undergraduate Research conference. She was also my professor for the following classes: Global Change Ecology, Biology Problems and Ecology.