I’ve spent a good chunk of time over the past 2 months putting out small mammal traps to catch rodents at different field sites in coastal Louisiana. My goal is to understand the prey base of local carnivores and then figure out if they are being selective about what they eat or simply taking prey […]
Archive for the ‘Mammals’ Category
You dirty rat?
A safe port for harbor seals and other marine mammals
As I mentioned in my last few posts, harbor seals (and a wide variety of sea creatures) seem to challenged most by competition with humans (for food and space), pollution, and disease. Although several harbor seal populations appear stable or increasing, there is still concern about seals in Alaska, Scotland, and other locations. Given human […]
Disturbing the seas
In my last post, I explored the large issues facing harbor seals throughout the 20th century, including competition with humans, pollution, and disease. In looking at the last decade or so, these themes continue to be important but I think that they have become more indirect in nature in some cases. Although seals still eat […]
Harboring organochlorines
A quick look at harbor seal population trends around the world suggests that there have been ups, downs, and even some unknowns- catastrophic crashes in one part of the world while numbers grew in another and scientists couldn’t determine the pattern in a third. This wide-spread species shows corresponding variation in population status, but three […]
Life in cold water
As I write this, snow is falling outside on a cold, wintery New England day. Beautiful to look at and fun to play in when all bundled up, but it’s nice to know that I can come in from the cold at any time. I am amazed by mammals and birds that survive in environments […]
Helping bats get to the light at the end of the tunnel
I’ll admit that the reading I’ve done on white-nose syndrome over the last few weeks has been pretty depressing- at one point I saw an estimate of 6.7 million bat deaths so far (Cohn 2012), which is a horrifying number. But I think it would be even more horrifying to simply resign ourselves to the […]
If the fungus can’t take the heat (or cold), will it leave the bat alone?
Looking through the most recent literature on white-nose syndrome isn’t exactly reassuring, although it does suggest that progress is being made in understanding how the fungus affects bats and what conditions may help bats survive infection. As of last year, at least 19 US states and 4 Canadian provinces contained infected bats (Blehert 2012) and […]
Losing our insect control
Over the past week, I’ve been looking into when and how scientists first became aware of white-nose syndrome in northeast bats, as well as what the loss of those bats could mean for all of us. It’s pretty depressing reading on the whole- especially when you realize that it has developed so quickly. What were […]
Things that flutter in the night
This month I had some help picking a topic to focus on- a fellow doctoral student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette had approached me about doing something together and then suggested bats as a topic. To be specific, she suggested white-nose syndrome, and I agreed with her for several reasons: first, bats are […]
Does it really help to be on the A list?
As I mentioned in my last post, species listed on Appendix I of CITES are not permitted in international commercial trade. These are species which are threatened with extinction if trade continues. Trade is allowed only for non-commercial use and under exceptional circumstances. In order for the specimen to be transported internationally, first an import […]