Martens

Meet scientist Aritz Ruiz who you heard featured in the Martens podcast: 

Where do you work?

I´m member of the “Systematics, Biogeography and Population Dynamics” Research Group at the Dept. of Zoology and Animal Cell Biology. University of the Basque Country. UPV-EHU (Spain).

What do you study?

My research is focused on phylogeography and landscape genetics studies of martens in order to understand how ancient and contemporary factors shape genetic variation. The research field of non-invasive genetics (i.e. the use of non-invasively collected samples such as hair and feces as source of DNA) let us to investigate the biology and the ecology of secretive carnivores without disturbing them.

What are three titles you would give yourself?

Environmental scientist, pragmatic , enthusiastic about all I do.

What do you like to do when you are not working?

I enjoy travelling but also reading travel books (a cheaper way to discover other regions of the world). I like hiking (always searching for carnivore signs), playing soccer, and other relaxed activities like cuddling up on the couch watching a good movie or listening to music.

What do you like most about science?

The chance to explore and give answer to different questions in ecology and evolution combining the information obtained by traditional field work and novel genetic data.

Images

View a gallery of photos from Ari’s day in the Basque mountains:

Images courtesy of Ari Daniel Shapiro and Javier López de Luzuriaga

Video

Remember the four-hundred-year-old oak tree in the podcast, the one whose hollow trunk held fourteen people? We’ve posted a video of all those people climbing out of the giant oak.

Facts

Meet the family: Martens belong to the weasel family, or Mustelidae, a group of furbearing carnivores that includes ferrets, mink, weasels, wolverines, badgers, and both river and sea otters.

The European pine marten has two North American cousins, the Martes americana, also called a pine marten, and the larger fisher, Martes pennanti. There is also a nonnative population of stone martens in Wisconsin. Stone martens brought to Wisconsin to establish a private fur farm in the early 1970s escaped and established a small wild population.

The more adaptable stone marten often ventures into towns and cities in search of food and territory, sometimes denning in attics and barns—even the engine compartments of cars. Their territorial instinct may explain their well-known penchant for chewing on automobile engine cables and hoses.

Feces in the animal world is known by different names. Scat refers to the feces of wild carnivores. Other nouns are used to refer to the excrement of birds (droppings), cattle and elephants (dung), deer and elk (fewmets), seabirds and bats (guano), earthworms (castings), and insects (frass).

Participate

If you’ve had the good fortune of seeing an elusive creature near where you live, tell us about it or send us a photo at eol.org.

Try your hand at the online, stink-free scat identification challenge at eNature.com, or download the free Backyard Scat and Tracks app from the iTunes store. Want the real scoop on wildlife poop? Check to see whether your nearest state or national park offers ranger-led walks or training in scat collection for ongoing wildlife monitoring, such as the pika-scat project in Glacier National Park. Up-to-date listings of citizen science projects can be found at Science for Citizens.