The Journal of Mammalogy has published a new study that used genetic techniques to determine that island spotted skunks diverged from their mainland ancestors over 9,000 years ago, and that the islands were likely colonized by a single matriline. The study was conducted by several Island Spotted Skunk Working Group members, including Ellie Bolas and Dr. Benjamin Sacks. As a bonus, this edition of JMamm has a photo of an island spotted skunk as the cover image! Check out the paper at the link below.
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 The Wildlife Society featured a blog post discussing Ellie Bolas' island spotted skunk camera trap project and the need for further island spotted skunk research and protection. Ellie completed this important work at UC Davis as part of her Master's research, and it was published in The Wildlife Society Bulletin in 2020.
"Similar to the rings of a tree trunk scripting a plant’s life span year by year, whiskers lay down atoms of carbon and nitrogen as they grow. These atoms, invisible to the human eye, hold information about what the animal was eating as the whiskers grew. How? Because the carbon and nitrogen come from their food!"  What will this whisker tell us about an island spotted skunk's diet?
Check out this recent post from Chuck Graham, a freelance writer and photographer based in Carpinteria, CA. Chuck captured a series of photos clearly showing a pair of island foxes attempting to nab an island spotted skunk from the talons of a young red-tailed hawk.
We've seen some island foxes with neonatal spotted skunks in their mouths, but this is a new one. In the next few months, researchers on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands will be using radio collars to identify sources of mortality among adult and juvenile spotted skunks. In this video, island skunk biologists place a new radio collar on a skunk captured near her den on Santa Cruz Island. They collect biological samples, including hair and whiskers for genetic information and stable isotope diet analysis. After release, this skunk was tracked regularly as a part of a study on skunk den site selection.
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