A Colorado State University research team has begun looking into how illnesses are transmitted in mountain lion populations, work that could help manage future outbreaks of diseases such as feline leukemia virus.
A research veterinarian and associate dean for research in the CSU College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Susan VandeWoude, is leading a team that recently received $2 million from the National Science Foundation for the five-year study.
According to a press release, the project is intended to shed light on the outcomes of human impact — both wildlife-management practices and land development — on the wild cats.
The new research is designed to further understand how people affect puma movements in the wild and the way that disease travels through populations, providing insight about wildlife management used from Florida to California.
"Large carnivores like pumas tend to be especially sensitive to human impacts," according to Kevin Crooks, a professor in the Warner College of Natural Resources and a researcher in the study. "They're often the first to feel the effects, like a canary in the coal mine," he said.
Researchers plan to compare the genetics of various puma populations looking for the degree to which they have interbred, which could tell about their travel patterns.
"It's hard to track how they move, so we use genetics to infer where they've gone," researcher Chris Funk, an associate professor in the College of Natural Sciences, said. "If you have two groups with similar genes, you can infer that they have interacted."