I’m really pleased that we can now officially go public about our red squirrel genetics project that will be starting on the Isle of Bute very soon. It’s a ‘minimally invasive’ study that uses hair tubes to collect tiny samples of red squirrel hair. Essentially, the squirrel gets some food and we get some hair on a sticky patch. The follicles at the end of the hair yield DNA and that DNA can tell us a lot about our squirrels.

The project is being run by Dr Rebecca Synnott from the South-East Technological University (SETU) in Ireland.

The public announcement is at https://www.researchireland.ie/news/enterprise-funding/. Scroll down until you find ‘Isle of Bute’.

More information to follow soon.

Malcolm Newdick.