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How can we understand the behavior of bats? Bats are mostly soundless, flying in the dark. Many bats can use echolocation to hunt and can avoid the traditional nets used to capture them. A research team led by the University of Gttingen has developed a new method for counting bats using modern technologies. The new method allows scientists to better understand bat behavior and populations, which should lead to better informed science. The results were published in a journal.
Bats can be caught in nets or recorded with their calls. Some bats do not emit sounds and echolocation can detect and avoid nets even in the dark, meaning these methods are prone to errors. Modern technologies can be used. Researchers created and tested a new method for countingbat point counts by combining data from thermal, Ultrasonic, and near-IR sensors. To compare it against the traditional methods, researchers used nets to capture and measure 83 bats, used sound recorders to record and analyse dozens of hours of sound, and used hundreds of near-IR pictures and sound recordings.
The new technique was able to find similar species numbers even though "bat point counts" were only conducted for a third of the sampling time. Only one species could be detected by all three methods. Kevin Darras is the first author of the book. We needed to combine three modern technologies to get a full picture of the flying bat communities.
The researchers found that fruit-eating bats are rare in oil palm plantations. This finding was very different from previous studies, which used nets and concluded that these bats dominated oil palm plantations. This suggests that fruit-eating bats have a short "commute" through plantations and are easy to catch with nets. Bats can fly around nets in these open plantations. Our new technique shows that bats are more common in oil palm than previously thought, and that they might play a role in suppressing insect pests.
Researchers have been given new insights into the activity and prevalence of different bat species. The new method will lead to better measures to protect species as well as new data to understand bat behavior.
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Journal reference
Kevin Felix Arno Darras, Ellena Yusti, Joe ChunChia Huang, DelphineClara Zemp, Agus Priyono Kartono, Thomas Cherico Wanger, and many more. A new sampling method shines light on flying bat communities. The DOI is 10.1002/ece 3.8356.
