Mexico City – Sixty years ago, residents of the crossed town of the channel Mexico City We can pluck axolotls – The big gastros that reminds us of a small dragon – outside the water with their hands because they were very abundant. Now it is almost impossible to find it in the wild.
For this reason, scientists from the Independent National University in Mexico filter the mysterious xochimilco waters of the effects DNA created at risk.
“We all threw DNA on our way all over the world and can be captured by filtering air or water,” said biologist Louis Zambrano of the university’s environmental laboratory.
While they are trying to monitor the numbers of dwindling axolotls, scientists are increasingly dependent on this technique as their nets are empty during periodic investigative studies of the population, which are found only in xochimilco.
They try the water taken from the channels and filter it for environmental DNA, or the genetic molecules left by animals and plants that have water in contact with water. This is after that compared to the introductory files contained in a genetic library collected a few years ago by British scientists, as Esther Quintro said of maintaining international in Mexico, which has cooperated with Zambrano since 2023.
Scientists collected water from 53 locations in xochimilco: 10 internal shelters where clean water and water are filtered and 43 outside those areas. They found axolotl dna inside protected areas and in one location outside.
In reference to the unprotected area, Zambrano said, “It is very few,” but there is a sign of the possibility of flexibility, even as environmental deterioration and channel pollution continues.
So far, and The researchers searched only a third of xochimilco With environmental DNA technology and manual work with networks, they are planning to continue work and we hope they will provide an updated enumeration early next year.
The direction, however, is not good. Among an estimated 6000 axes per square kilometer in 1998, there were only 36 square kilometers in the last census, in 2014.
Zambrano highlights that his team’s work has shown that conservation works and that efforts to protect species are also improving water quality, which increases the number of recipients in the region and means that Mexico is better benefiting from xochimilco water, among other benefits.
He said that politicians can do more, such as banning the opening of dance clubs, resorts, and football playgrounds in the traditional human xochimilco islands, known as Chinampas. Instead, the government must stimulate the islands Traditional agricultural productionEnsure that farmers can actually gain living in it.
If his home is fixed, Axolotl can take care of the rest.
Zambrano said: “Axolotl reproduces a lot because it puts a lot of eggs … it can recover easily and we know how,” Zambrano said.
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