Anna Hulsebosch

I am a biology master’s student at the University of Wageningen & Research in the Netherlands. For my MSc thesis I researched the red squirrel(Sciurus vulgaris) with a focus on determining any lasting effects of a virus outbreak in the Netherlands in the 1960’s. Now I am doing my MSc internship here at the university of Edinburgh at the conservation genetics group. Continuing my work on the red squirrel, however this time it is the Scottish red squirrel. The situation in the UK is more dire than in the Netherlands, as the red squirrel is actively being threatened by the invasive North American grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis).To support and protect the red squirrels ‘Strongholds’ were established in 2012, in these strongholds a forest management is implemented that is advantageous for the red squirrels. For this internship, I will be focussing on these strongholds and the differences between the red squirrels that dwell either inside or outside the strongholds. The diversity of the squirrels in Scotland is already extremely low, but I hope to find that the diversity of the country is completely present inside the strongholds. If that is the case, the genetic diversity is protected by the strongholds and a new spread of the grey squirrel will not easily lower the diversity even more.