#and biologists first started checking if bats do use echolocation

[asparklethatisblue]

last week I saw a bat fluttering around my neighbourhood, which is amazing cause my vision sucks and I have astigmatism which makes it especially hard to see things near light sources (i see lights super blurry so obviously small black objects in the dark near a light source are harder to see)

and yesterday I was walking to the store, determined to try and spot a bat where I’d seen one before. And!!! One flew right past me super fast quite a bit away! Also I did see TWO bats flying around together where I’d seen the very first one a bit ago! They were so fast I could barely see them, but it was definitely two, and maybe they were doing some sort of courtship behaviour? I don’t know that much about it, but it’s definitely mating season. So I was stood in the most unlit part of a pathway, trying not to cry cause I was so happy. I wish I had a recorder to hear their songs, because males do sing to woo their mates, but the cheapest recorder i’ve seen is 200£ or so. I’m 90% sure it’s pipistrelles of some kind, because they fly extremely fast and acrobatic, and are really common in the UK. Just based on speed and location that’s the most likely species, but there’s more than one kind of pipistrelle. It’s cool though, because it’s one thing to know on paper what sort of environment bats enjoy, and what it looks like in real life. The bats I expected to see are in the most tree dense part of this entire area, the one that flew by me was more or less out in the open by a very well lit street! They don’t have areal predators at night, and it was past sundown, so maybe it is fine? I did read that very bright streetlights disturb then. But then again in America there’s bats that straight up live in the middle of a big city!

anyway. I think whatever caused the mental breakdown the other day is quieting down and I’m just happy there’s bats here! I doubt my landlord would let me put up a bat box, but that’s ok, I know there’s a few around here and even though I can’t volunteer to help with bats in general (i need a car, the region doesn’t have reliable enough public transport) I can still see them!!

[glaciernps]

Bewitched by Bats from an Early Age

By Renata Harrison

Tonight I witnessed something truly unique. We’ve trapped and taken measurements of over 25 little brown bats. I’ve seen the intricacies of their wings, their fuzzy bodies, their tiny teeth. We even caught a flying squirrel. As amazing as all of that was, though, the real marvel of the night was a special relationship that formed.

Twenty-five people stand in a circle listening to wildlife biologist Lisa Bate explain the evening’s events. We’re all here for the Going Batty field trip, having come from near and far to discover the world of bats. One of the participants, six-year-old Izzy Herreid-Terrill, has driven six hours from Bozeman, Montana to come to Glacier for this field trip. As Lisa tells us the plan for the night, no one is paying better attention than Izzy. Clutching two plush, stuffed bats to her chest, she hangs on to Lisa’s every word.

Izzy’s obsession with bats began during a visit to Lewis and Clark Caverns in southern Montana, where she was upset to learn how they were affected by white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has killed millions of bats in North America. On the first day of kindergarten, when teachers asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, she said she wanted to save bats from the disease. Izzy feels that bats are misunderstood. “They’re not as scary or ugly as adults think,” she explains.

Lisa Bate gets it. Surrounded by bat enthusiasts, she tells us how her own fascination began. As a young girl not much older than Izzy, she’d sit out in the backyard, watching as bats appeared out of the darkness to hunt for insects. She developed her very own bat-signal—a rock in a sock. Flinging the bright, white sock into the air, she watched as dark forms swooped to investigate it.

Lisa has been studying flying animals for over 25 years as a wildlife biologist. She earned her master’s in wildlife biology, focusing on birds. When she arrived in Glacier, she admits, “I didn’t know anything about bats, other than that I liked them and I was fascinated by them.” She was surprised to learn that there had never been a formal survey of bats in the park. With the threat of white-nose syndrome looming, Lisa decided to take action. She recruited the help of world-renowned bat biologist Cori Lausen. With funding from the Glacier National Park Conservancy, Cori led Lisa and her team on a crash course in bat surveying. Two years later, Cori left the project in Lisa’s capable hands, and it continues to this day. Tonight, Lisa and her colleagues have invited the public to take a peek into the mysterious world of bats.

After an introduction to bat biology and survey techniques, we head off to check out the mist nets used for trapping. Lisa leads the pack, striding ahead at her field-biologist pace. Most of us amble behind, chatting, but someone is running to catch up with Lisa. Izzy’s full of questions, and Lisa bends down as they walk to make sure she hears them. I watch as these two bat buffs confer like longtime colleagues, stepping in stride. Although things have changed, Lisa has typically been in the minority as a female in her field. She’s clearly delighted to talk to this gung-ho little girl.

Lisa and her team’s task tonight is to collect, identify, and take measurements of as many bats as they can catch. The goal of these surveys is to get a better idea of which species of bats live in the park and where they hibernate.

Obtaining this baseline data is essential, especially now with the threat of white-nose syndrome. The disease has killed millions of hibernating bats. Some species have been reduced by as much as 90%. One of these species is the little brown bat, the most abundant bat in Glacier. Little brown bats are extremely susceptible to white-nose syndrome. The fungus invades their tissues as they hibernate, disrupting water and mineral balances, and often killing them. Since its discovery in a cave in New York in 2006, white-nose syndrome has spread to 33 states and 7 Canadian provinces. “It’s a matter of when—not if—it arrives in Montana,” says Lisa.

Sitting in the waning evening light, we eagerly wait for the trapping to begin, but Lisa informs us that we won’t start until the birds stop singing. That’s the bats’ cue to come out and start hunting, and our cue to raise the nets. All nine of Glacier’s bat species are insectivorous and can eat thousands of insects a night. Izzy points out that the first time she saw bats they were eating mosquitoes, which immediately earned them her support.

Through a combination of echolocation, highly adapted wing structure, and super-fine sensory motor control, bats pinpoint prey in the dark. Surprisingly, they can also see the fine mesh of mist nets used for trapping. If the nets are at the wrong angle to the wind, if there’s too much moonlight, or if raindrops are stuck to the net, bats will notice and fly around them.

After about an hour of waiting, there’s a flurry of excitement. At the mist net set up over the creek, Lisa’s colleagues have started catching bats. Radioing back and forth to each other, the biologists give instructions. “We’ve already got thirteen down here!” “Let’s get this going,” Lisa says. “I gotta start processing these!”

Lisa rushes to her truck, a batmobile in every practical sense. As we gather around, eager to see our first bat, Lisa asks for an assistant. Izzy is perched in the truck bed, ready to hand Lisa the tools she needs. Another young helper records data. It’s important to process the bats as quickly as possible so they can be set safely free again.

Although she’s working quickly, Lisa doesn’t leave Izzy, or the rest of us, in the dark. She talks through the process of identifying the bats, holding each one gently in gloved hands. With each step, Lisa makes sure Izzy can see and understand what she’s doing.  As I watch her look at the bats’ teeth, measure their wings, and determine their sex, I realize that I’ve never really given bats a chance. I admit, I’m one of those adults who found them, well, a little scary and ugly. Seeing them up close and learning about their incredible adaptations starts the wheels turning, but it’s Lisa and Izzy’s enthusiasm that seals the deal.

Watching them bond over bats, I think back to when I was Izzy’s age. Although I loved the outdoors, I was a lot more fearful than she is. My family spent summers in a cabin on a lake in northern Ontario, where spiders and night noises sent me into waves of panic. Coming back from the outhouse in the dark, I’d dart to the cabin and close the door breathlessly behind me against the night. I didn’t know what was out there, so my mind conjured monsters. I overcame my fear of spiders by learning about the adaptations behind their creepy appearance. It continues to surprise me how education can erase fear. Before tonight, I never wanted to get this close to a bat. The closer I look, though, the more enamored I become of these amazing creatures of the night.

It's now past midnight. My urge to go home and crawl into bed is winning over any desire I have to study more bats. I’ve been squinting through my camera so long, I’ve lost track of who’s around me. I walk to my car in the dark alone, not tempted to run breathlessly like I used to. As I drift off to sleep in my warm, comfy bed, I remember that Izzy was still there when I left a while ago. Could she still be out there now, perched in Lisa’s truck bed, persevering through every last bat?

The next day, I find myself talking about bats to anyone who will listen. Luckily, I catch Lisa at the office and thank her for a wonderful evening. Somehow buzzing with energy after such a late night, she’s clearly charged up by something. “Wasn’t that little girl great!!” she blurts out. Beaming, Lisa tells me proudly that Izzy stayed until 2:00 a.m. helping her process all the bats. As she rushes to her next adventure, she trails off, “I have just about a million more things I could tell you about Izzy…”

                                                                                   ****

Later, I’m sitting in my office, poring through photos from the field trip. My attempts at photographing the bats squirming in Lisa’s hand under the dull glow of a headlamp are as fuzzy as the bats themselves. I sigh and rub my eyes, feeling a bit morose at not having done these unique creatures justice. It’s difficult to capture how delicate they are, how ephemeral. I wonder if I’ll ever have the chance to see them like that again.

An email pops up in my inbox, interrupting my thoughts. It’s from Izzy’s mom. She writes that Izzy came home from the field trip and said it was the best day of her life! She could recite almost word-for-word everything she learned from Lisa that night. She, too, couldn’t stop talking about bats the day after the field trip. When asked if she wanted to share anything about the event, Izzy said, “Only that more people should learn about the things in nature all around them, and then they wouldn't be scared.”

[Image descriptions, top to bottom: Photo 1: Closeup of a little brown bat on a researcher’s glove. Photo 2: A little girl and a woman scientist step in sync down a gravel path in the woods. Photo 3: Closeup of a little brown bat with white fungus covering its face. Photo 4: A little girl and a scientist talk to each other across the back of a pickup truck. Photo 5: Illuminated by headlamp, a woman scientist shows the little girl a bat. Photo 6: Closeup of a little girl gazing admiringly at a bat held by a researcher.]

[ntrending]

Looking for bats in all the wrong places

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/looking-for-bats-in-all-the-wrong-places/

Looking for bats in all the wrong places

There are at least three things that those of us with a passing knowledge of bats know to be true. Bats are nocturnal. They have weak eyesight and thus navigate their dark world using echolocation. And they live in caves. But the truth is more complex. Some bats do fly during the day. Some bats, like fruit bats, have perfectly fine vision. And not all bats live in caves.

Here in the United States, many bats on the East coast do live in typical underground caverns, but there are plenty of places where bats have alternative housing options. “As you get further west they don’t have many traditional caves and mines. Like in Nebraska they don’t have very many,” says Catherine Hibbard, a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But while those states lack caves, they do have bats.

“They have some mines in Washington State,” adds Hibbard, “but the bats, especially little brown bats and Yuma bats don’t seem to be using them. We really don’t know where they might be hibernating.”

Which raises the question: where are these bats hiding out?

The question has taken on new urgency since the emergence of white-nose syndrome, a fungal infection that has wiped out more than 6 million bats in the United States a result of the introduction of the fungus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, in the early 2000s.

The bats that Hibbard mentioned are species that are particularly susceptible to the disease and whose populations have been decimated by its introduction. A decade ago the little brown bat was the most common bat in the country, numbering in the millions. But 2015 research by the United States Geological Services says that in the Eastern United States, where the disease has run rampant, bat populations could decrease to less than 100,000 animals. Knowing more about where bats are and how they use their environment might be key to tracking the disease’s spread and sustaining their populations.

“Last year was the first year that they confirmed white-nose syndrome in Rhode Island. It wasn’t that we didn’t think white-nose syndrome was there,” says Hibbard. “But Rhode Island doesn’t have caves or mines, and it took a while for them to track down where these bats might be.” It turns out that those bats were hanging out in culverts.

For their long winter naps, bats need a warm, moist, dark, and quiet place to hibernate. Often, that’s a cave, but other places, like culverts, offer a suitably bat-cozy environment to snuggle in for a few months.

Researchers are now working to find out these other bat hangouts. The hope is that by finding where bats are located, the biologists may find places that are refuge from Pseudogymnoascus destructans, the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome. At the same time, according to Hibbard, we don’t know that much about bats, and this could provide crucial information into bat behavior.

“We’ve been doing acoustic monitoring in the fall around the areas where we’ve been detecting white nose syndrome, to try and pinpoint these habitats where bats might have higher activities, so around talus slopes and cliffs which might suggest that they are using these features in the winter either to roost or foraging areas,” says Abigail Tobin, white-nose syndrome coordinator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

If you look at the map of where white-nose syndrome has spread, Washington State stands out as anomaly. Before 2016 the farthest west the disease had spread was in Oklahoma. But that year, for reasons nobody yet understand, it suddenly jumped to Washington. Like on the east coast of the United States, it wasn’t until the emergence of the disease that researchers began to heavily study their bat populations. What we do know is that there are noticeable differences in bat behaviors. The biggest is the fact that while in the eastern part of the US bats can hibernate in groups reaching thousands, in the West the bats that are susceptible to white-nose, such as the Myotis bat, tend to roost in populations of one or two and generally not in caves.

“They’re dispersed across the landscape and are using a variety of habitat to survive,” says Tobin.

Biologists like Tobin are using acoustic monitoring to get a sense of where the bats are. But to understand specific use—is this location used for hibernating, or just roosting—more detailed research is required. Some of this research, like tagging bats, hasn’t yet been done—in part because it’s really hard, and often involves heading into landscapes that are far more friendly to animals that fly than animals that walk. One of the few places where some of that work has been done is in Maine.

“We suspected as biologists that bats stayed in other environments besides caves,” says Bruce Connery a biologist in Maine’s Acadia National Park. “But because that’s really hard to find we had never been able to check that out.”

Because mid-coastal Maine, where Acadia is located, doesn’t have very many caves, the thought for a long time was that the bats did a kind of long distance commute. In spring, went the reasoning, they would travel 200, 300, 400 miles to Maine from caves in New York, Vermont or Western Massachusetts and then conduct a return trip in the fall as temperatures dipped. But around 2010, as bat research ramped up because of white-nose syndrome, Connery and his team of researchers realized that they were still finding bats late into October and that the bats would show up really early in the spring. This would have meant that the bats were traveling those large distances on nights when the temperatures in interior New England were way below zero—and the insects’ the bats depend upon for food would have been in short supply. This didn’t make sense, so Connery and his colleagues started looking closer to home for places the bats could be hibernating.

Acoustic monitoring—that is setting up audio recorders designed to listen out for bat calls—helped lead them to a geological formation known as talus slopes.

“New England was covered with glaciers 10,000 or so years ago,” says Connery. “As they left they put different pressures on the land and those rocks crumbled off the side and they fell into these heaps off the side at the toe or at the base of the slopes.”

Those slopes aren’t solid rock, however. While the faces contain openings that are relatively small by human standards, they can lead to gaps large enough to fit everything from a single bat to dozens of bats. By tracking the bats to these slopes, they were able to set up nets to track the bats and affix transmitters on them to see where the bats were traveling. Technological advances helped as well. Before 2010, the batteries needed to power the trackers were too heavy to affix onto a bat. But by 2010 they had shrunk enough in size to make this kind of tracking feasible.

These days, Connery and his colleague strongly believe that talus slopes don’t just serve as roost sites for bats in the summer, but because they’re often warm and have an internal moisture – not unlike caves – bats use them through the winter. The tracking data showed that some bats do stick around through the Maine winters.

“Apart from the rock faces places there are number of states that are looking in other types of locations,” says Hibbard. “In South Carolina they’re looking in rock shelters, and in Delaware they’re looking at old military bunkers, and there are a number of states where they’re looking in culverts and cisterns and wells”

Researchers are also leveraging citizen science projects. Many states ask people who know where there’s a bat colony to report that information to their state’s bat biologist. If they know where the bats are in the summer, they could begin seeking out where the bats are hibernating come winter.

“Bats play an important role in our ecological services,” says Tobin. “They are great for pest control they eat tons of mosquitoes and moths that damage agriculture, there are several seeds that are pollinators that help to disperse seeds. Without them you’ll lose that key role in our environment. We’ll probably start seeing cascading effects from that if we lose a key part of your bat population.”

Written By Kendra Pierre-Louis