Welcome to the Rittenhouse LabWe study where animals live, movements animals make when traveling through habitats, and why wildlife populations persist in some locations but not others. Our goal is to identify and answer excellent research questions. We work within globally relevant conservation contexts, yet we focus on the uniqueness of local places and serve the research needs of managers who make decision about wildlife populations
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Help with our Mallard Research
Mallard populations are declining across the eastern U.S., but we don’t know what has caused this decline. We are currently studying mallard nesting and brood rearing across the urban-rural interface in Connecticut. Although mallards are habitat generalists, we don’t have a good understanding of how they respond to urban and exurban development. Urban areas present challenges to nesting mallards (predators, disturbance, limited habitat availability, etc.) – does this influence nest and duckling survival?
We need your help locating mallard nests!
We need your help locating mallard nests!
Where do we work?
We live in a mosaic of housing densities. Fly over in a plane and you see continuous forest canopy. Drive in a car and you see roads and houses. This landscape consists of forests, wetlands, and floodplains, yet these ecosystems are intermixed with houses, roads, retail, and golf courses. Its not urban its not rural. Its a mosaic. We are live in exurban areas and thus study exurban wildlife. What we learn today maybe what you experience in your region tomorrow.
How do we work?
We conduct experimental research here in this outdoor mesocosm facility. We also conduct experimental wildlife research in field settings by collaborating with foresters. For example, we are testing wildlife response to the removal of mature, overstory trees from within wetlands. We are also quantifying bat response to young forest created by the regional New England Cottontail management efforts. Within the mesocosm facility, we create experimental wetlands using 150 small tanks and 50 large tanks and experimental forests using 18 enclosures. The facility contains electrical posts to facilitate temperature manipulations. We are currently manipulating temperature and road salt within tanks and quantifying how tadpole populations respond when exposed to ranavirus.
Check out these links...
Bobcats in Bridgeport?
Bobcats in every town Slow motion release of a bobcat WNPR radio show We were tracking sightings at iNaturalist but now we prefer that you report bobcat sightings here. |
Q. So what did foster this career interest?
A. I watched the Discovery Channel — a lot. And my family took road trips every year to national parks. I got to see the big charismatic places and to appreciate how fortunate we are to live here because of the awe-inspiring places that our national parks really are. |
A story map created by Cary Chadwick and Mike Evans.
Black bears have become an unmistakable presence living in close proximity to people. The highest concentration of bears are in "exurban" neighborhoods - higher than rural forest or suburbs. Exurban neighborhoods with between 6-50 houses/km2 contain the most bears. |