Josefa Celsa Señaris (born 2 November 1965) is a Venezuelan
herpetologist. She has published information about frogs and she has identified new genera and species. Señaris is the director of the La Salle Foundation's Natural History Museum (
Spanish: Museo de historia natural La Salle - MhnLS) in Caracas.
She is interested in the
fauna of Venezuela, in particular the
Guayana Region where table-top mountains called
tepuis provide habitats for
endemic plant and animal species: some amphibians are known only from a single tepuy. From a geological point of view, the tepuis have been isolated for approximately 120 million years,[2] and it has been suggested that the tepuy habitats are a "lost world" that could support
relictual populations.[3] However, Señaris's work suggests that in a zoological context tepuis are not as isolated as originally believed, and that some of their species are
neoendemics rather than
paleoendemics. For example, an endemic group of
tree frogs, Tepuihyla, have diverged after the tepuis were formed, that is,
speciation followed colonization from the lowlands.[4]
Señaris became the director in 2004 of the La Salle Foundation's Natural History Museum (
Spanish: Museo de historia natural La Salle - MhnLS) in Caracas.[1]
Señaris has erected two
genera (including Tepuihyla mentioned above) and
described several species new to science. In many cases Señaris collaborated with two other herpetologists, José Ayarzagüena and Stefan Gorzula.[5]
Honours
Eponyms
In recognition of her "contributions to the knowledge of centrolenid diversity and morphology" she has had a
genus of
glass frog, Celsiella, named after her nickname which is Celsi.[6]
Legacy
She has
described a number of
taxa, in particular amphibians[7] but also a few reptiles.[8]
^José Ayarzagüena Sanz (1952–2011) was a Spanish herpetologist who specialised in Venezuelan crocodiles as well as frogs. Stefan Jan Filip Gorzula is a British-trained American. Bo Beolens; Michael Watkins; Michael Grayson (22 April 2013).
The Eponym Dictionary of Amphibians. Pelagic Publishing. p. 81.
ISBN978-1-907807-44-2.