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
