Puckett Receives Grant To Study Brown and Black Bears

Will inform future conservation and management efforts

Dr. Emily Puckett, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Center for Biodiversity Research (CBio) Associate, has been awarded a grant from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game titled: Landscape Genomics within a Sympatric Population of Brown (Ursus arctos) and American Black (U. americanus) Bears in Southeast Alaska.

Bear cubs are born while their mother hibernates over the winter, and emerge from the den in the spring. These “cubs of the year” will stay with their mother learning to navigate the landscape, forage, and climb, then will den and hibernate with their mother and siblings. Bears stay with their family unit to forage through the next spring, then make their natal dispersal and obtain their own home range; black bears disperse when they are 1-2 years of age, where brown bears may be 2, or 3. Natal dispersal helps animals to not mate with their relatives; further, it produces genetic patterns across the landscape. By studying these individual-level genetic patterns and their correlations with landscape features such as habitat type, slope, temperature, rivers, and road networks, we can determine aspects of the landscape that are both barriers and corridors for dispersal.

This project will compare and contrast these landscape genetic signatures between brown and black bears across Southeast Alaska, a region characterized by mountainous terrain, the Gulf of Alaska to the west, glaciers to the east, and islands of the Alexander Archipelago. Southeast Alaska is one of a limited number of places around the world where two bear species coexist in the same habitat. Our analyses will identify if these two species with similar ecologies and body sizes experience the same barriers to gene flow. This work will inform future conservation and management of both bear species in this region.

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For more information on this grant and/or research, contact Puckett at emily.puckett@memphis.edu.