Thesis Thursday – Francisco Montijo

Francisco Montijo is an undergraduate student in the Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science at the University of Arizona. His major is Environmental Science with emphasis in Land, Air and Water. He has extensive laboratory and research experience in field of entomology, ecological and evolutionary biology, of insects and their symbiotic microbial communities specifically Julysus wikiham and Burkholderia species. In a different project he is also examining the presence of organic pollutants in harvested rainwater using analytical techniques such as Solid Phase Extraction. And finally in his third project he correlating whether lizards living closer to streams prefer aquatic prey over terrestrial prey using isotopic analyses. He was selected as part of the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program which is a competitive program funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to equip future conservation leaders with the skills they need to be competitive for jobs and graduate school and to break down barriers to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of conservation.