Mary Uzzell

m.uzzell.1@research.gla.ac.uk

ORCID iDhttps://orcid.org/0009-0005-7322-4624

Research title: Partitioning the Roles of Genetics and Life History in Reproductive Biology

Research Summary

My research focuses on the Eurasian common lizard, Zootoca vivipara, a bimodally reproductive species with both egg-laying and live-bearing lineages. I focus on a hybrid zone where these lineages are in contact, interbreed, and produce offspring with an intermediate phenotype (thin-shelled eggs laid late in development), working to characterise and quantify reproductive isolation between the lineages in the hybrid zone.

More broadly, I am interested in evolutionary processes, in how organisms are shaped over generations by their interactions with each other and their environments, and how and why they separate into species (or don't). 

Supervisors

Grants

Genetics Society: Heredity Fieldwork Grant (2023)

Explorer's Club: Rising Explorer's Grant (2022)

Turing Scheme: Mobility Grant (2021-22)

University of Glasgow School of Life Sciences: Undergraduate Summer Vacation Scholarship (2021)

Conference

Population Genetics Group - PopGroup57 (January 2024)

Poster presentation: "Natural hybridisation between oviparous and viviparous common lizards described at second location"

Teaching

MVLS Graduate Teaching Assistant, November 2022 - present

Courses covered:

Zoology/Marine & Freshwater Biology Level 2
- Statistics labs
- Bird diversity labs
- Habitat diversity labs

Zoology/Marine & Freshwater Biology Level 3
- Statistics labs
- 'Host as Habitat' labs (fish dissecions for parasites)

Genetics Level 3
- R support


Image of Molly in a forest, with a large frog in the foreground.