Projects

Category	Wildlife Biology/Damage Management
Project	53-96 - Genetic and morphological stability of small mammals
Project Leader	Kelt
Affiliation	UC Davis Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology
Objective	In 1959, Dr. H. Howard initiated what a very long-term study on voles (Microtus californicus) at HREC. When I joined UCD in late 1995, I began to consider what additional information could be gleaned from these long-enclosed plots. My work is based on the premise that extreme isolation of a species known to exhibit substantial multi-year cycles in population numbers may have led to demographic bottlenecks in these vole populations. Fundamentally, I am investigating loss of genetic variation in isolated vole populations, as well as a specific morphological response to reduced genetic variation. This response - fluctuating asymmetry - may occur when animals are unable to compensate for "environmental abuse" during development. To date my work has documented minimal loss of genetic variation, but we have not completed collecting samples for morphological analyses. HREC pens are highly suitable to this project because of the duration of isolation (46years, or somewhat more than 60 Microtus generations), and the presence of pitfall traps that allow simulated emigration (this prevents populations from expanding exponentially, a dynamic known as the "fence effect").