WASSER, S.K.; University of Washington: Integrating Physiological and Genetic Approaches for Landscape Conservation

Physiological studies can contribute greatly to conservation. However, the complexity of natural environments over space and time, coupled with the extent of land use and other disturbances facing wildlife, often demand a large-scale analysis that is atypical of many physiological studies. Specifically, the number of individuals and the area covered must be maximized to adequately partition impacts from the many pressures encountered by wildlife. My laboratory is addressing these needs by integrating non-invasive physiological and genetic approaches with a unique sample collection method. We use stress and reproductive hormones from scat to monitor physiological impacts of a variety of disturbances on wildlife. DNA acquired from these same samples allows us to ascertain the species, sex and individual identities, as well as determine species abundance and distributions of the animals that left the samples. The scale of these analyses is further broadened by the use of detection dogs, trained to find scat samples of multiple species over large landscape areas with high efficiency. Sample location is recorded using a GPS, and all data are layered onto a Geographic Information System to correlate species-specific abundance, distribution and physiological health measures with human disturbances over large landscape areas. Applications of this approach will be described for the study of large carnivores in the Americas.