Bats fly around en masse at dawn and dusk, but little is known about where they live, why they live there and in what numbers — especially in the San Joaquin Valley.
Most people see the winged mammals as pests or fear them because some can carry rabies, but bats do more good than harm, said Fresno State biology professor Dr. Joshua Reece, who is part of a research project studying the behavior and sounds of bats.
Bats are important from a biodiversity standpoint. They provide a benefit to humans by eating crop pests and mosquitoes that might spread disease.
“Many bats consume their body weight or more in insects every night,” said Reece, who is overseeing the species identification and sound recording.
There have been no reports of bats attacking people, he jokes, although they would bite if you somehow managed to grab one out of the air. Don’t touch bats or dead ones for that matter, he warns.
Reece and his research team of undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Science and Mathematics at Fresno State are collaborating with neurobiology professor Dr. David Lent for the study. The team started working with biologists in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks over the summer to identify different species of bats through their echolocation calls.
“We’re going to monitor the boxes with our students who are doing research in introductory biology classes and with some of the upper division classes,” Reece said. “It’s experiential learning. It will allow students to develop their own hypotheses, test them and encourage their own critical thinking and love of science.”
n the parks, students use microphones to capture bat calls. Bats navigate through sound, or echolocation, most of which cannot be heard by the human ear. Each species has a unique sound. With fancy microphones — some that plug into a cell phone — and cool software, the students can record the calls and then determine which species is flying by based on the pattern of its echolocation.
The students also put out nets to catch bats, harmlessly, so park biologists can take measurements and swab them for diseases like white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease killing bat populations across North America.
Long-term bat monitoring is necessary in case entire species or populations of bats start to disappear, Reece said. “If you’re not up there watching, you wouldn’t know what is happening.”
Graduate student Shelby Moshier loves the hands-on research she has done in the Reece Lab the past two years.
