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Is TypeWhizz Real Or Another Online Scam? Let’s InvestigateThe chinampas of Mexico’s Xochimilco neighborhood host the endemic axolotl, an endangered freshwater salamander. In recent decades, its population and habitat have decreased dramatically as a result of urbanization, poor water quality and new predator fish species being introduced in the canals.
The rickety rowboat has been traveling for about half an hour through Xochimilco, a precolonial borough in southern Mexico City, past canals, ditches and meadows when it docks at a small strip of land. Vegetables are grown on this, a strip of farmland originating back in the Aztec era, more than 500 years ago.
Vivian Crespo and Paula Cervantes, researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico , get out of the boat and walk to the ditch, where just above the surface the top of a large, square cage made of bamboo and plastic netting lies. Inside swarm three male axolotls, part of the UNAM research project that seeks to help increase the dwindling axolotl population.
Once the three animals are put into a container filled with ditch water, measuring can begin. First, she scans the male salamanders, which are all chipped. “Number 102489,” Crespo whispers. She carefully places 102489 next to a yellow tape measure. “Wow, this one has grown a lot, and just in one week!” The axolotl also appears to have gained considerable weight. In this ditch, where they live on water fleas, among other things, these axolotls clearly feel at home.
The axolotl can breathe in four ways, including through its skin, and poor water quality can make them sick. One of the first things Crespo and Cervantes do on arriving at a refuge is to check the water quality. Farmers on the chinampa play a big part in keeping the water clean. They will be compensated if they make an axolotl refuge in a ditch adjacent to their land: small compensation.
For young scientists like Crespo and Cervantes, it makes no difference. They continue to get in their rowboat every week, heading to the chinampas to measure salamanders. Their next big effort is in September, when they will run a census of the axolotl population in Xochimilco, the first one in the last decade. But how do you measure how many salamanders are living in such a dense area?
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