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A Temporal Analysis of Urban Coyote (Canis latrans) Activity in Long Beach, CA
Stephen Gloudeman
The coyote (Canis latrans) is found across the United States in both rural and urban ecosystems. They have always filled a niche in the ecosystem in the wild as both scavengers and hunters, but in urban environments they have adapted to anthropogenic food sources and pose a threat to communities. In communities such as Long Beach, CA, the presence of a coyote can be dangerous to pets and humans, which is a concern of residents. This arm of the ongoing study includes the implementation of game cameras to understand daily coyote activity and movement throughout the community. The data give us important information about the diurnal and nocturnal behavior as well as family group sizes and dispersion times. Future measures include trapping and radio-collaring the coyotes to obtain geographical data on the movement patterns, as well as community engagement and education. Through community education and citizen reporting, we hope to manage the problem and minimize human-coyote interactions. Our goal is for the community to coexist with the coyotes and to avoid extermination.
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Genetic Diet Analysis of Coyote Scat from Populations in Long Beach
Alexis Isaev and Matthew Sheridan
Interactions between humans and local wildlife are inherent to urbanization and have created a demand for management solutions. Coyotes (Canis latrans) are prominent in urban ecosystems and can potentially cause a variety of residential threats, as seen at Long Beach, CA. Currently, a project is underway assessing the coyote population, in order to better understand how the animals function in the city and how best to manage them. The main components of the study include monitoring coyote activity and dispersal patterns, how the urban environment affects coyote living strategies, and a dietary analysis. The dietary analysis has two components: a solid analysis of the bones found in the coyote scat and a parallel study on the genetic material of prey items found in the scat. This study will focus on the genetic analysis of the coyote scat using species-specific primers for PCR.
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INTEGRATION OF HUMMINGBIRD RESEARCH INTO PUBLIC SCHOOL SCIENCE
Kaitlyn Yee, Maria Curley, Lisa Fimiani, and Emily Simso
Hummingbirds are beautiful, acrobatic and mysterious synanthropes in urban ecosystems, providing important benefits to humans such as pollination, insectivory, and biophilia. However, environmental factors that affect behaviors that lead to such services are largely unknown, and could be altered by urbanization and climate change. Though their extremely high metabolism can make detailed observations of hummingbird behavior difficult, simple and low-cost methodologies, such as remote monitoring equipment deployed at feeders and nests, allow students at all levels of education to closely observe hummingbirds directly from their school sites. The Center for Urban Resilience (CURes) and the Center for Equity for English Learners (CEEL) at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) have partnered, to implement CURes urban ecology curricula Urban EcoLab in various Los Angeles area schools and classrooms. With support from the Daniel and Susan Gottlieb Foundation, internet protocol (IP) cameras have been installed as a key element in the curriculum that will allow participation in world wide hummingbird research in the classroom. Beyond enriching the understanding of how animals thrive in urban environments, we propose to develop a model that will facilitate the investigation of complex scientific questions through collaboration with citizen science and integration of the Urban EcoLab curricula into primary and secondary-level public school curricula.
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Mapping the South Los Angeles Food Desert
Alice Tiffany
The USDA defines a food desert as“a low income-census tract where either a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store. ”This is the case with South Los Angeles, where grocery stores are scarce, magnifying the dependency on corner and convenience stores, and fast food restaurants. Government and advocacy organizations recognize this as an issue of inequity, yet the problem persists. Meanwhile, the data that is available is not comprehensive and is quickly becoming outdated. The aim of this study is to develop a detailed, current map of where fresh, healthy food is unavailable in South Los Angeles, and whether this is correlated with population demographics. This project will illuminate persisting inaccessibility of fresh, local, organic produce in South Los Angeles and provide data for residents and political activists fighting to bring healthy food back into this food desert.
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Monitoring Mosquito Larvae Population Density in the Ballona Wetlands Freshwater Marsh
S Bruce-Eisen
Mosquitoes play an important role in wetland ecosystems. Their larvae feed on algae and plankton, and also provide a valuable food source for migrating bird species. However, adult mosquitoes can be a public health concern due to their possible transmittance of vector-borne diseases. The importance of protecting both the ecosystems used by mosquitoes and public health has prompted the monitoring of mosquito populations in the BallonaWetlands. This research aims to investigate and understand how the freshwater marsh supports the early life history stages of mosquitoes, and what role the BallonaWetlands play in mosquito population dynamics in west Los Angeles. The work presented here is the first phase: a pilot study that tests the utility of field-based surface water sampling methods to quantify the abundance and diversity of mosquito larvae in the freshwater marsh. This experimental study will provide temporal data of the appearance of mosquitoes in the wetlands, report population abundances of mosquito larvae, pupae and eggs, and discern the specific locations that contain the highest densities of mosquitoes.
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Patterns of Urban Hummingbird Nest Distribution on the LMU Campus
Amy Weber
Urban environments provide numerous benefits to hummingbirds including feeders, planted flowers, and nesting sites.
The thermal environment, among other factors, may be important to hummingbird’s choice of nesting microhabitats (Calder 1974).
Allen’s and Anna’s Hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin sedentarius) breeds during the winter months in Los Angeles (Clarke 2017).
Between 2012 and 2016, five active hummingbird nests were discovered and monitored on the LMU campus.
In 2017, 15 active nests were monitored on the LMU campus. The locations of these 15 active nests and 45 older nests seemed to exhibit a clustered pattern, and individual nests often were in close proximity to built structures.
Question: How does the distribution of 2018 nests across the LMU campus compare to the distribution of hummingbird 2017 nests? What are the microhabitats surrounding hummingbird nests?
Hypothesis: The distribution of 2018 hummingbird nests across the LMU campus will be similar to the 2017 distribution. Most nests will be partially sheltered from the sun and wind by their surroundings, and many will be in close proximity to built structures.
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Plastic Perception: An Analysis on Single-Use Consumerism
Lindsay Beck, Nicole Alaverdian, and Alexxa Melendez
Plastic has become essential to everyday use as the material is very costeffective and therefore used to create various single-use products. According to the Ocean Conservancy, the amount of ocean plastic in weight will outweigh fish by 2050. Concerns about plastic pollution have provided an incentive for people to buy reusable products, which has been encouraged by legislation banning certain single-use products from being freely distributed. Data indicates that massive quantities of singleuse plastic are simultaneously being produced and thrown away daily; however, there is little data that indicates whether reusable efforts have made a difference in slowing this process. Thus, the purpose of this study is to better understand: 1) whether people have measurably made a switch from using single-use items to reusable items; 2) whether levels of plastic pollution have changed following the implementation of plastic bans; and 3) whether knowledge about single-use products varies by a person’s geographic location, income, education, or other demographic factors. Methods will include conducting surveys with individuals in both inland and coastal communities in Los Angeles, California, as well as analyzing data from beach cleanups from local organizations. We anticipate the findings will help show whether these reusable measures are effective, and if so, whether that is consistent across locations and populations. This can provide useful information to municipalities and other local organizations working to reduce plastic pollution.
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Sustainable Diagram on Food Waste Reduction Programs in Mitigating Carbon Footprint—a Loyola Marymount University Case Study
Timothy Mandema
Food waste is an economic, social, and environmental problem with broad implication. The direct impacts from fossil fuel use, food waste rotting in landfills, water use, and transferring food waste create environmental stressors associated with climate change. Increasing methods to reduce food waste are becoming common practice across private sector as a tool to reduce economic cost and carbon footprint. This study aims to evaluate the food waste diversion efforts at Loyola Marymount University’s dining hall. The research approach examining Loyola Marymount dining halls’ sustainability efforts will be broken down into two separate stages: analyzing food waste data pre- and post-implementation of mitigation efforts, and diagramming the mitigation efforts including the composting, liquefying, and dehydrator processes. This study hopes to demonstrate how a university’s efforts to reduce food waste can contribute to the overall goal of sustainability. Using diagrams to relay findings, this study can serve as encouragement to LMU to continue and increase sustainability efforts, and as a model for other universities.
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Tree Canopy and Environmental Distribution Justice in Los Angeles: A Look Into Tree Planting Groups
Natalie Menicucci
The distribution and maintenance of urban tree coverage in Los Angeles is an issue of environmental justice. Researchers have found that there is a direct relationship between tree coverage and income and race in the city. Los Angeles has a tree planting initiative, called “City Plants,” with a goal that people in every neighborhood have equal access to trees and their benefits. Yet it is not clear how or whether tree planting organizations embody this in their practices. To address this problem, the purpose of this study is to examine how decisions on planting locations are made by planting groups, the challenges barriers these groups face, and whether these barriers led them to plant trees in certain neighborhoods rather than others. The data will be collected through interviewing different groups (both nonprofit and city agencies) involved in planting trees around Los Angeles. Tree planting groups will be able to use findings to help them become more aware of how they approach environmental justice in their practices, and their role in the equitable distribution of urban trees. This information may prompt changes to tree planting approaches, funding, and policy making.
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Who Would You Bring Home? People’s Perceptions of Animal Adoptability
Nicole Gaglione
Although the motto “adopt don’t shop” has increased the general public’s awareness surrounding shelters and animal adoption, there is not a whole lot of information based on people’s perceptions of what makes an animal “adoptable” or not and how this impacts shelter animals’ quality of life. In one study, it was discovered how the act of shelter employees labeling each dog based on its breed could have a major impact on the dogs adoptability. So why is this? Why are people so caught up in the breed, attractiveness, age, health, or as one study describes the “sociability” of dogs as the main determinants for a dogs adoption? This research aims to better understand why and how people label animals as “adoptable” and what this means for shelters and the populations of animals within them. Research methods will include: 1) semi-structured interviews with animal care takers in several Los Angeles animal care facilities and 2) an in person survey of the people who enter these facilities. Results will provide information about how animal owners perceive their own pets and/or potential pets based on characteristics of “adoptability,” and how animal care workers view their role in influencing these perceptions. Findings may aid local shelters in promoting adoption and improving strategies to alter the general public’s perspectives on viewing animals as more than just commodity pets but rather see them as individual beings that all deserve to be “adoptable.”
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Wildlife Services Coyote Management Project: Owl Pellet Dissection
Grace Riggs
The “Wildlife Services Coyote Management Project” aims to advance the understanding of the urban coyote population in the Long Beach area. In addition to using pre-existing data already gathered by local wildlife services, the team is working to assemble more information on the behavior and distribution of urban coyotes by means of scat analysis. Now in its second year, the project will augment its data through gene=c analysis of scat and building up the repertoire of animal skeletons through means of owl pellets to further study coyote diet. Owl pellets have been proven to be an effective means of finding more complete prey skeletons than coyote scat. Unlike the coyote, which chews its food before it swallows, the owl swallows its prey whole and expels the innutritious ma[er out in a pellet. This makes owl pellets an excellent source of nearly whole skeletons. Therefore, this portion of the Long Beach coyote project will focus on the methodology, results, and analysis of matching skeletons from owl pellets to bones found in coyote scat to be[er understand urban coyote diets. In addition to helping serve the ultimate goal of developing a coyote management plan for the City of Long Beach, the owl pellet analysis will also serve as a way of surveying the biodiversity on LMU’s campus and the surrounding area.
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Assessing Urban Parklands: Novel Use of Game Cameras to Study Park User Behavior in the Baldwin Hills
Jorge Gamboa
The preservation and conservation of public open spaces are essential in urban settings as they promote the growth and sustainability of local communities and surrounding environments. The Baldwin Hills Conservancy manages the Baldwin Hills Park System and aims to promote recreation, restoration and protection of urban parks. This study’s goal is to provide park managers a longitudinal study of the attitudes and behaviors of park visitors. The study includes the use of game cameras to examine visitation and access to the parks, which serves as a passive, novel methodology in order to study human movement patterns into and around the park. This poster will describe the methods and summarize preliminary data collected during the period October 30, 2015 through April 30, 2016. A total of 129 days of data were collected in four locations in the parks, which included 7679 images and 133 hours of time lapse video. Of the data collected, a subset of 1,001 images from one location, a park entrance, were selected and assigned into categories. Preliminary analysis of these data indicate several initial trends that are identified and discussed. Ongoing efforts include full-scale data collection. As part of the Baldwin Hills Park User Study, the methodology and findings of this.
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Caching Behavior in Corvids: Cognition and Pattern Recognition
Matthew Allegretti and Ethan Flake
Caching behavior in two corvids, American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and western scrub jay (Aphelocoma californica) were recorded using motion-activated cameras and direct observations in order to compare behavioral differences between the two species. Investigating bird caching behavior is important in determining the cognitive capacity of each bird species and displaying how these avian species may have adapted to living successfully in urban ecosystems with highly variable food sources. Both species were baited using peanuts. We video recorded how birds selected peanuts to examine potential size or weight preferences specific to either species. After initial observations of caching behavior with untreated peanuts, food dye was applied to peanuts with a mass greater than 2.5g. contained within a group of undyed peanuts with a mass below 1.5g. By varying which group the dye was applied to, it was possible to examine the extent to which corvids were capable of recognizing patterns associated with their food source in order to optimize caching productivity. The ability to rapidly recognize changes and patterns associated with their food sources could allow for rapid adaptation in feeding that provides corvids with a significant selective advantage in urban environments.
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City of Colton Urban Forest Management Project
Nelson Hunter-Valls, Giovanni Di Franco, and Maria Curley
As population growth continues in our urban centers, urban forest management becomes an important priority. Trees are an essential component of resilient and healthy urban communities, providing benefits including mediating the urban heat island effect, storm water management, and energy and water efficiency, carbon sequestration, and city beautification. In order to assess the current status of Colton’s urban forest, interdisciplinary teams of students and scientists from the Center for Urban Resilience (CURes) at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) have assisted Jack Sahl & Associates with an extensive inventory of the tree resources within the City. In gathering data describing the size, distribution, age, health, and energy efficiency benefits of the city’s trees, this study seeks to provide recommendations for best management practices of Colton’s urban forest. Colton has strived to engage the public in an open dialogue about this project. Colton is the first city to deal with the task of conducting an inventory of all the trees located within the public domain, in the future the strategies used here will be improved.
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Coyote/Human Interactions in the City of Long Beach, CA
Hayley Hart, Nicole Infantino, and Christopher Jaime
Coyotes (Canus latrans), while an integral part of a healthy ecosystem, have posed prominent problems across the United States in cities and residential areas, including the local neighborhoods of Westchester, Long Beach, and Playa Vista. The abundance of anthropogenic food sources in urban areas increases coyote density and causes more frequent coyote-human interactions. Our study aims to accurately assess the benefits coyote populations bring to an ecosystem as well as their interactions with these communities while also properly managing the threat to their residents and promo*ng coexistence. We plan to educate residents in these communities on how to interact safely with coyotes. Through community reporting and education, we hope to ensure that wildlife feeding regulations will be enforced and the feeding will cease, vastly limiting the anthropogenic food sources available to coyotes and reducing the impetus for interactions between coyotes and humans in these communities. We hope to apply our refined methodologies in the future so that they can be applied on a more general level to mi*gate similar coyote management problems in other urban areas, allowing future research to further analyze the effects of the reduction of anthropogenic food sources on coyote abundance and distribution.
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Extensions to a Novel Predator Aversion System Intended to Protect Nesting Endangered Least Terns Sternula antillarum browni at Venice Beach, CA
Alexis Isaev and Armaan Zare
Extensions to a prototype predator aversion system using electric shock conditioning are described using both field and laboratory testing. Responses were recorded and analyzed using various recording equipment capturing digital photographs or video images. The major extension explored in this study is examining sensory cues (aside from touch) associated with using replica bait. The experiment in Venice Beach is further validated by understanding the interaction of corvids and replica bait.
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Hummingbird Responses to Predator Decoys
Michael Gloudeman and Erich Eberts
Hummingbirds act as important pollinator species in many Western Hemisphere ecosystems. In urban environments, artificial feeders have become an important food resource.1 Without artificial feeders, hummingbirds move around to different flowers locations to find nectar and thus may be less predictable to a predator. However, as feeders provide abundant food, hummingbirds often habitually return to the same feeder. This provides a unique opportunity to predators. If hummingbirds are not able to properly identify or respond to threats near a feeder, they are likely more susceptible to predation. This may significantly affect hummingbird demographics in urban areas and/or apply selective pressure towards behaviors that minimize predation. In this study, various predators and threats are presented at established feeder sites using both artificial predator decoys and vocalizations. Visitation rates are monitored using video cameras in order to analyze and interpret responses. This investigation aims to enrich the understanding of the broader impacts artificial hummingbird feeders may have within the urban environment.
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Influence of Demographics on Use and Understanding of Urban Green Spaces in Los Angeles, CA
E. Simso
Urban ecology is the study of how humans interact with their built surroundings, particularly in cities, which are densely populated and have significantly altered natural environments. Urban green spaces are vital areas that support community health and environmental benefits. In this study, residents from Inglewood, Santa Monica, and Culver City, California were surveyed to determine how demographics affect their use and understanding of green spaces in their neighborhood. Data was collected from 98 individuals at parks, libraries, and farmers’ markets to best represent each city’s known demographics. Statistical analysis was done to determine the differences between these cities and the measured demographic variables of gender, race or ethnicity, income, and age
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Patterns of Urban Hummingbird Nest Distribution on the LMU Campus
Amy Weber
Hummingbirds are among the most beautiful, acrobatic and mysterious animals in urban ecosystems, where these synanthropic species provide important benefits to humans such as pollination and biophilia. We plan to evaluate how various abiotic and biotic factors found in urban environments such as the LMU campus may affect hummingbird nesting patterns. Thorough nest searching throughout campus has revealed an apparent clustered distribution of nests, as well as patterns within the microhabitats of individual nests. We plan to complete a detailed inventory through standardized habitat evaluation and nest searching at Von Der Ahe, where a large number of active (15) and previously used (4) nests have been located (as of 3/20/2017). We predict variables such as shelter from rain and wind, vegetation density, and the proximity of flowers may increase the likelihood of nest site selection in a particular area. Determining where hummingbirds may preferentially nest in an urban environment will facilitate the location of active nests for investigation into hummingbird nesting behavior and physiology and also define landscape habitat attributes that will enhance hummingbird presence.
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Photodegradation of FD&C Red No. 40 Dye in Synthetic Hummingbird Nectar
W. Muscara and L. Carrington
It is common among many homeowners and bird enthusiasts alike to provide supplemental nutrition for Hummingbirds through nectar feeder set-ups. Often commercially available nectar powders and concentrates contain a variety of red dyes solely to make the nectar look more appealing for the customer. Based on the lack of information regarding the safety of the dyes for the birds, investigation into how FD&C red #40 (the most common red dye) degrades in a sucrose solution exposed to sunlight is warranted. Ultra High Pressure Liquid Chromatography and mass spectrometry were used to identify the chemical structure of FD&C Red #40 and determine ideal ppm concentrations for best analysis of potential metabolites. Ultimately, degradation of dye in the presence of controlled artificial sunlight in a sucrose solution (~25% sucrose) and subsequent analysis will help to determine the degraded metabolites that arise and gain insight into their potential harm to hummingbirds.
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Potential Impacts of Artificial Feeders on Hummingbird Behavior
Alyssa Weisblatt and Carolyn Egekeze
Hummingbirds act as important pollinator species in many Western Hemisphere ecosystems. In urban environments, artificial feeders have become an important food resource and may affect hummingbird behaviors that provide important ecosystem services such as pollination. Over the past four years, hummingbirds have been observed and video recorded at feeders on the campus of LMU in order to evaluate how the presence of artificial feeders affect hummingbird behavior and distribution. Additionally, observations are now being recorded at a second Burbank, CA study site where hummingbirds have been consistently fed for the last 40 years and adjacent feeders often attract as many as one hundred birds at the same time. This present study, in part, serves to update and summarize observations from the LMU campus from various independent research projects. We plan to compare basic hummingbird behaviors on the LMU study site with the Burbank location by comparing behaviors and interactions of hummingbirds visiting feeders of varied levels of activity through the analysis of video footage and acoustic recordings. This investigation aims to enrich the understanding of the broader impacts artificial hummingbird feeders may have within the urban environment.
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Ratio of Juveniles and Adults of American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos in Family Groups at Loyola Marymount University and Venice Beach, Los Angeles, CA
Yeon Jae Kim
American crows are highly social animals and display cooperative breeding, where nonbreeding offspring help their breeding parents care for juveniles. (Chamberlain-Auger, Auger, & Strauss, 1990). In order to gain a better understanding of the role of these nonbreeding offspring in raising nestlings and juveniles, crow nests and breeding groups were closely observed on the campus of Loyola Marymount University and at Venice Beach during the early summer of 2016. In each group, juveniles were usually closely associated with a single adult, however, the apparent roles of the adults within the group varied. In these apparent family groups one or two crows simply watched and supervised while the adults closely associated with each juvenile fed the juveniles. These differing apparent roles adopted by adults may ensure juvenile safety while in the process of feeding. Confirmation of these apparent roles would be best determined in future study by color banding resident birds.
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