RECORDING Virtual Professional Speaker Series: The Rise and all of Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse Lineages

Listen to a recording of the event which occurred on July 26, 2022 here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G0VosLlllT2Rz8MTFS-rsHY5fHperdTE/view?usp=sharing

The Rise and all of Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse Lineages

The San Francisco Bay area is home to several species, subspecies, and populations of wildlife that are

uniquely adapted to coastal wetland habitat. Of these, there may be no better representative of marsh

habitat health than the salt marsh harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys raviventris). The salt marsh harvest

mouse is found only in the San Francisco Bay Area wetlands. It is highly restricted to marsh habitat and

utilizes several unique adaptations – including strong climbing and swimming skills, and the ability to

drink salt water – to persist in the saline, semi-aquatic environment. The salt marsh harvest mouse, like

other San Francisco Bay Area endemics, has lost a significant amount of historical habitat due to

conversion of marsh to primarily anthropogenic land uses. As a result, they were one of the first species

listed on the California and United States Endangered Species lists. My work applies genetic and

genomic tools to help better understand the modern range of salt marsh harvest mice and the

evolutionary relationships between distinct populations within the Bay Area.

Cody Aylward, PhD Candidate, UC Davis

I am a conservation geneticist with ten years of experience working with threatened and endangered

mammals. I am broadly interested in applying genomic tools to practical conservation outcomes, and in

linking conservation research to land use. I earned a Master’s degree in Wildlife Science from the

University of Vermont using spatial and genetic data to determine how American marten (Martes

americana) recolonized parts of the northeastern United States and how landscape conditions may

facilitate future population recovery. I recently completed my PhD program in Ecology at UC Davis, using

genomic tools to reveal the evolutionary history, present distribution, spatial habitat requirements, and

resource use of endangered salt marsh harvest mice in the SF Bay Area. In addition to research, I have

spent the past several years teaching courses at UC Davis, such as the Conservation of Wild Mammals

Laboratory, and I have served as a member of the American Society of Mammalogists Conservation

Committee, working to ensure conservation policy accurate reflects the best available science.