Where do raccoons go and why? How do they use developed versus undeveloped spaces in an urban landscape? Is there a way to use information on their movement patterns to better inform their management?
About the UCSB Urban Raccoon Project:
In the summer of 2017, graduate student Molly Hardesty-Moore and her team of undergraduates began to gather data on the secret life of raccoons. The goal is to use this information to broaden our understanding of raccoon spatial ecology and better inform management plans for raccoons around UCSB. Funding generously provided by the Hellman Faculty Fund and a National Geographic Society Young Explorer's grant. |
Urban Mesopredator Stable Isotopes
Who's eating my trash: do all generalist mesopredators use human foods the same way?
Spoiler Alert: No, they don't! Our research has found raccoons have shifted significantly toward consuming anthropogenic foods over time, while Virginia opossums have not, with striped skunks falling somewhere in between. Fascinating!
This is a project branching from the Urban Raccoon Project, which uses stable isotope analysis of hair samples to examine how three common mesopredators - Virginia opossums, raccoons, and striped skunks - use human food resources and the ways their interactions with the urban dietary landscape have changed over time.
With help from the amazing collections from the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration (CCBER) and the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum, we have been able to compare the diet of these three species over time using stable isotope analysis on modern and historic hair samples.
This is a project branching from the Urban Raccoon Project, which uses stable isotope analysis of hair samples to examine how three common mesopredators - Virginia opossums, raccoons, and striped skunks - use human food resources and the ways their interactions with the urban dietary landscape have changed over time.
With help from the amazing collections from the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration (CCBER) and the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum, we have been able to compare the diet of these three species over time using stable isotope analysis on modern and historic hair samples.