Photo: Dan Shaw with students, trapping and collaring a porcupine. 

Bosque School student Sarah (’17) and Delaney (Amy Biehl HS ’18) are partnering with the UNM Biology Department and NCGR (National Center for Genome Resources) to study porcupine genetics in the Albuquerque Bosque. Over the past 13 years, Dan Shaw, BEMP Co-Director and Bosque School Wildlife Biology Faculty, and his students have been capturing and radio collaring porcupines in the bosque adjacent to Bosque School. Quill samples were collected from every porcupine that students caught, relocated, or collected (if deceased). Thus far, about 90 quill samples have been collected. The quills fall as the porcupine moves through its environment and contrary to popular belief, a pocupine does not “shoot” its quills as a defensive strategy.

Sarah (Bosque School)

Delaney (Amy Biehl HS)

Sarah and Delaney are in the process of extracting DNA from the quills and analyzing the genetic relatedness of the porcupines in the bosque. This data gives us information on gene flow within the population and can indicate whether inbreeding is occurring. This work is highly advanced and Sarah and Delaney have been tackling it masterfully. They plan on presenting their work at multiple scientific conferences since the methods that they are using are rigorous and groundbreaking. There are very few studies on porcupines in the southwest so their project is adding significant insights  about these wonderfully weird creatures.

Post by Katie Elder, Student Research Projects Coordinator