Postdoctoral Researchers

I collaborate with government officials, universities, NGOs, and local residents to seek practical measures to eliminate threats toward targeted species. I use both ecological approach to understand necessary resources for the population to survive and human dimensions approach to identify ways to practically conserve such resources. Through utilizing these approaches, I aim to reveal steps that need to be taken for conservation of species.

In this Anthropocene, urbanization is dramatically expanding worldwide and causing a loss of biodiversity. What should we do to maintain biodiversity in an urbanizing world? To address these issues, I research human-wildlife interactions in urban areas using both natural and social sciences. What kinds of impacts are wildlife facing from urbanization? How do people perceive urban wildlife, and how do they think about appropriate human-wildlife interactions in urban areas? What should we do to create urban areas where humans and wildlife can coexist? I hope that focusing on urban animals and the relationships between humans and wildlife can provide insight into how we should behave in the Anthropocene.

Website：https://sites.google.com/view/yutakahata/

Publications
・Leonard et al. 2024. The Earth Hologenome Initiative: a global platform for standardised research on wild animal-microbiota interactions. Trends in Ecology & Evolution (accepted)

・Takahata Y., Uchida K., Shimamoto T., Kutsukake N., Shirai K., Tanaka K., Ito M. 2023. Supplemental feedings affect diet seasonality and niche width in urban Eurasian red squirrels. Journal of Mammalogy 104:1443–1454.

・Takahata Y., Uchida K., Shimamoto T., Kutsukake N. 2022. Keeping treasure safe: Eurasian red squirrels cache valuable food far from the food source with low canopy cover. Behaviour 160:201–216.