Science Diary: Bat Diversity – Forest Fragmentation

Music
Ambience: Emptying bat traps, bat clicks

“MBCRU A7148”

Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. We’re with Tigga Kingston, a biologist from Texas Tech who is in Malaysia studying bat diversity. She traps the bats to document the number and variety of species in the forest. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the sounds of a bat as Tigga places an identifying band on it.

“We’re sampling bats that can be caught in the forest under story. So that’s not the full complement of seventy-one species that are found in the reserve, because some of those species forage above the canopy, or at the forest edge, and we have to use different techniques to capture those, because they won’t fly inside the forest itself. Whereas our little forest bats, they’re specifically adapted for being very maneuverable, so they have short, short, broad wings and little fluffy bodies. And they have echo-location signal designs that means that they can detect insects even though they’re in a very cluttered situation. So, if you can imagine that you’re a little bat looking for insects in a forest, and you send out a call, what you’re going to get coming back to you are echoes from all sorts of things. You’re going to get echoes from the leaves, from the twigs, from the trees, and hopefully from an insect. And the challenge for them then, is how do you distinguish an insect echo from vegetation echo. And they have a number of solutions to this, but one of the consequences of those solutions is that they’re actually somewhat restricted then to the forest interiors. And this is what makes the group we’re studying particularly vulnerable.

Tigga Kingston and her team hope that by learning more about the impact of forest fragmentation, better conservation plans can be put in to place to protect the forest bat populations. Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

Science Diary: Bat Diversity - Forest Fragmentation

In Malaysia, logging puts many species of bats at risk.
Air Date:11/06/2007
Scientist:
Transcript:

Music
Ambience: Emptying bat traps, bat clicks

“MBCRU A7148”

Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. We’re with Tigga Kingston, a biologist from Texas Tech who is in Malaysia studying bat diversity. She traps the bats to document the number and variety of species in the forest. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the sounds of a bat as Tigga places an identifying band on it.

“We're sampling bats that can be caught in the forest under story. So that's not the full complement of seventy-one species that are found in the reserve, because some of those species forage above the canopy, or at the forest edge, and we have to use different techniques to capture those, because they won't fly inside the forest itself. Whereas our little forest bats, they're specifically adapted for being very maneuverable, so they have short, short, broad wings and little fluffy bodies. And they have echo-location signal designs that means that they can detect insects even though they're in a very cluttered situation. So, if you can imagine that you're a little bat looking for insects in a forest, and you send out a call, what you're going to get coming back to you are echoes from all sorts of things. You're going to get echoes from the leaves, from the twigs, from the trees, and hopefully from an insect. And the challenge for them then, is how do you distinguish an insect echo from vegetation echo. And they have a number of solutions to this, but one of the consequences of those solutions is that they're actually somewhat restricted then to the forest interiors. And this is what makes the group we're studying particularly vulnerable.

Tigga Kingston and her team hope that by learning more about the impact of forest fragmentation, better conservation plans can be put in to place to protect the forest bat populations. Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.