Virtual Professional Speaker Series - Cody Aylward, PhD Candidate at UC Davis

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 otherSan 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…