SQUIRRELS
Are you interested in helping with the St. Louis squirrel survey? If so, please fill out this form.
Project Overview
Scientists have recently identified the need to incorporate socio-cultural features beyond the physical landscape - such as mold complaints, access to grocery stores, and illegal trash dumping - into their studies of urban wildlife. These features contribute to urban wildlife evolution in ways that have yet to be uncovered and which will provide vital information on how to transform our cities to better support both wildlife and humans. Urban wildlife is expected to encounter novel selection pressures that differ from the surrounding non-urban areas. This research addresses how urbanization and associated landscape changes alter the evolutionary patterns of urban wildlife. Understanding how traits change in response to the urban environment, and which genes underlie those trait changes, can provide evidence of rapid evolution. By understanding the extent of these changes and wherein the genome they occur, scientists can build better models for how urbanization shapes the evolution of wildlife.
This project will collect DNA and morphological data from Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) in the St. Louis metropolitan area. DNA sequencing combined with landscape metrics will detect barriers and/or corridors for squirrel movement in the landscape, which provides evidence for non-adaptive evolution patterns. The morphological data will be combined with DNA sequence data to detect traits and their genes that may be under selection in the urban population. This work will examine the impacts of environmental management decisions on wildlife. Part of the data collection will be done by local students, which gives them hands-on experience in learning about evolutionary biology, mammalogy, and field research. The results of this project will help with future city planning and provide greater equity of access to wildlife for residents who are often overlooked by programs meant to connect people with nature.
This project will collect DNA and morphological data from Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) in the St. Louis metropolitan area. DNA sequencing combined with landscape metrics will detect barriers and/or corridors for squirrel movement in the landscape, which provides evidence for non-adaptive evolution patterns. The morphological data will be combined with DNA sequence data to detect traits and their genes that may be under selection in the urban population. This work will examine the impacts of environmental management decisions on wildlife. Part of the data collection will be done by local students, which gives them hands-on experience in learning about evolutionary biology, mammalogy, and field research. The results of this project will help with future city planning and provide greater equity of access to wildlife for residents who are often overlooked by programs meant to connect people with nature.