Erika Garcia

Erika Garcia
Ph.D. • 2018 • Cushing Lab, Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Department of Integrative Biology

Research Interests: Desert zombies, mata vendados, spawns of satan, and madre de alacranes are all colloquial names for camel spiders. Camel spiders, in the arachnid order Solifugae, are an interesting and perplexing group of arachnids distributed on all continents except Antarctica and Australia. Erika Garcia is a doctoral student based at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science working with Dr. Paula Cushing on camel spiders within the family Eremobatidae. Using biogeography, ecology, morphology, and genomic data, Erika wants to know how camel spiders have evolved through time and across landscapes in North America.