Amy Adams checks out her equipment: an antenna to pick up
signals from the VHF transmitter in the collar she will put
on possums during her PhD study. Photo by Jane Dawber.
A plan to rid Otago Peninsula of possums has spurred
zoology student Amy Adams to study the pest.
The University of Otago student is searching for possums as
part of her PhD into the spatial ecology and genetic
structure of urban possums.
She hopes people with possums on their properties will
contact her so she can begin tracking and taking samples this
summer.
Each possum's home range, the distance they travelled, their
habitats and how genetically similar they were, would be
studied, she said.
She would work alongside the Otago Peninsula Biodiversity
Group, which was working towards eradicating possums from the
peninsula.
"They'll be able to use my results to see where possums are
coming from and look at other areas to control," Ms Adams
(23) said.
It was being able to have an impact on the real world which
made the topic so interesting, along with the lack of other
significant New Zealand studies on the urban possum, she
said.
She hoped to begin in mid-August capturing and anaesthetising
possums before attaching a GPS collar which would collate
data every 15 minutes for two weeks.
After the two weeks, the possum would be recaptured and a
sample taken for genetic testing.
Then it would be into the laboratory to examine the results
of the samples before analysing the data, she said.
She can be contacted at adaam558@student.otago.ac.nz
rebecca.fox@odt.co.nz
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