EOU herpetologist, Dr. Laura Mahrt | facebook.com/eoumountaineers/
EOU herpetologist, Dr. Laura Mahrt | facebook.com/eoumountaineers/
EOU herpetologist, Dr. Laura Mahrt
Over the weekend, EOU herpetologist, Dr. Laura Mahrt took her students to Ladd Marsh to study small mammals. Students learned to bait traps and captured 31 deer mice, signaling a good year for raptors in the marsh.
“My students in mammalogy have been looking at study skins from the EOU museum all winter term. Going out and trapping gives us the opportunity to see the organisms alive,” Mahrt said.
According to Mahrt, small mammal populations are cyclic and the last couple years their numbers have been low, researchers can assess the raptor population based on small mammal numbers (their main food source).
“I had 8 of the 9 students involved over the two days, they set the traps at 6 p.m. on Friday night and checked the traps on Saturday morning at 7 a.m. The students learn how to set up a trapping array, set the traps and bait the traps. On Saturday, I taught them how to remove the mammals from the traps and how to sex them,” Mahrt said.
The mice were returned, unharmed, to their capture site after the students studied them.
Original source can be found here
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