{"id":56960,"date":"2019-09-12T09:38:55","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T16:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=56960"},"modified":"2019-09-16T13:47:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T20:47:49","slug":"2019-heritage-grants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/2019-heritage-grants\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU researchers receive grants to study threatened, endangered species in American Southwest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sept. 12, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nNorthern Arizona University professors received grants through the Arizona Game\nand Fish Department to research ways to help threatened animal species in\nArizona survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The grants\u2014$67,000 to Joe Mihaljevic\u2019s<\/strong> lab and $71,000 to Carol Chambers<\/strong>‘ and Faith Walker\u2019s<\/strong> lab\u2014are both part of the Identification, Inventory, Acquisition, Protection and Management of Sensitive Habitat sub-category. Competitive Heritage Fund grants go toward conservation efforts to protect endangered or threatened species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The grants\nalso provide opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to conduct lab\nand field work, gaining hands-on experience while contributing to creating\nhealthy ecosystems throughout the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracking a lethal virus in frogs<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Mihaljevic,\nan assistant professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber\nSystems and an affiliate of the Pathogen and Microbiome Institute, received\n$67,000 to study the transmission and progression of Ambystoma tigrinim\nvirus<\/em> (ATV), a type of ranavirus\u2014a pathogen that is lethal to fish,\nreptiles and amphibians\u2014in the Chiricahua leopard frog population that is\nendemic to the Southwest. This frog species is classified as federally\nthreatened, with its populations at risk because of habitat loss and\nfragmentation as well as disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mihaljevic,\nwho studies ecological informatics and infectious diseases, collaborated with\nAZGFD, as well as other organizations, to test wild adult frogs for\nranaviruses. To his surprise, many came back positive for ATV, a disease that\nshould only infect salamanders and newts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe main\ngoals of this project are: one, to document how widespread ATV infections might\nbe in these threatened frog populations; two, to understand which frog\nlife-stages (tadpoles, juveniles or adults) are most often infected; three, to\nunderstand whether ATV might put these populations at additional risk of\nextirpation; and four, to determine whether ATV infection can be observed in\npreserved museum specimens to establish more long-term trends,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Chiricahua<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The non-invasive field sampling will include swabbing the skin of tadpoles, juveniles and adult frogs and extracting DNA from those swabs. From there, Mihaljevic and his team can determine whether viral DNA is included in those samples. His team includes master\u2019s student Kelsey Banister<\/strong>, who is leading the lab work, and master\u2019s student Kathryn Cooney<\/strong>, who is leading the field work. Several undergraduate students are on the project: Diego Olivo<\/strong> and Braden Spencer<\/strong>, who are funded by the Urdea Undergraduate Research Grant; Monica Long<\/strong>, who\u2019s doing research on an overlapping project with salamanders; and Nicole Crews<\/strong>, who is joining the lab this fall through NAU\u2019s Interns-to-Scholars program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAmphibian\ndisease continues to be a major challenge to Chiricahua leopard frog recovery\nefforts across their range,\u201d said Audrey Owens, ranid project coordinator at\nAZGFD. \u201cWe are excited about Dr. Mihaljevic\u2019s ranavirus research project\nbecause it has major implications for how we conserve and protect Chiricahua\nleopard frog populations in Arizona.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Identifying opportunities to thrive\nfor an endangered jumping mouse<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Chambers, a professor of wildlife ecology, and Walker, a\nwildlife geneticist whose work is focused on non-invasive research, are\nstudying the endangered New Mexico jumping mouse to identify movements, home\nranges and dispersal potential. The goal is to use the collected data to\nidentify opportunities to connect disparate habitats to help the species\nthrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This research matters because the jumping mouse is a\ngenetically and morphologically distinct subspecies that is found only in the\nSouthwest. Jumping mice populations are declining and even disappearing in some\nplaces of their usual range because of habitat loss attributed to livestock and\nwater management, development, recreation and events like wildfires and\ndrought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This three-year study builds on previous jumping mouse\nresearch on which Chambers and Walker have collaborated. The team will live\ncapture jumping mice, collect non-invasive (fecal) genetic samples and put\nradio collars on animals to track their movements, targeting areas along\nstreams, rivers and lakes where the animals occur. DNA from buccal cells and\nfecal samples will be used to determine diet and dispersal with minimal impact\nto individual animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"New
Photo by Jos\u00e9 G. Mart\u00ednez-Fonseca<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe genetic and fieldwork our lab performs has provided so much new information on how the jumping mouse uses habitat,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cWe will be looking at dispersal in the field using radio telemetry and gene flow in the Bat Ecology and Genetics Lab. The information we are already finding will help with conservation of the species.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This grant will support one undergraduate research\ngeneticist, with several students already involved in the broader research\nthat\u2019s informing this work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctoral student Daniel Sanchez<\/strong> is studying the diet of this jumping mouse using DNA metabarcoding, undergraduate Austin Dikeman<\/strong> has been looking at the incidence of E. coli in this species and undergraduate student researchers Jacque Lyman<\/strong> and Samantha Hershauer<\/strong> have been involved in developing an eDNA assay to detect the jumping mouse from environmental samples. This eDNA assay was trialed in the field this summer; the team detected the species simply by swabbing plants along their home range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"NAU<\/figure>
\n


Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
(928) 523-8737 | heidi.toth@nau.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sept. 12, 2019 Three Northern Arizona University professors received grants through the Arizona Game and Fish Department to research ways to help threatened animal species in Arizona survive. The grants\u2014$67,000 to Joe Mihaljevic\u2019s lab and $71,000 to Carol Chambers‘ and Faith Walker\u2019s lab\u2014are both part of the Identification, Inventory, Acquisition, Protection and Management of Sensitive…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-56960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-academics","tag-college-of-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}