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The bat work

9/18/2013

4 Comments

 
The Mount Hope Mine In New Jersey  is a monitoring site for bats.  It has a history of large-scale bat swarms, and is a site where the endangered Indiana bat finds a place to hibernate.

But the bats have been dying from White Nose Syndrome, so the numbers are down.  I am not going into that here, as it is a topic worth much effort but not the point of this post.

So here are a few pictures from our work at the mine, without comment on the larger issue.of how WNS is affecting the bats, as that is something  outside of our work.


Picture
Aaron handling a bat.
Picture
And it is a little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus)
Note the sterile gloves. These are used to prevent White Nose Syndrome from being passed along during our work, and we go through a lot of gloves when we are catching a lot of bats.


Picture
Jennifer and Jenna working the bats.
And here Jennifer is making notes on a bag with a bat, while Jenna is working out the ID on a bat.  Jennifer is an expert, while Jenna is still working on her skills.  The bats can be tricky to identify, and this bit gives the new techs a chance to work out the differences between an Indiana bat from the other similar species.


Picture
An Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis)
Here is the Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis).  Note that it has a forearm band from a previous study and that the teeth are worn down.  This is an old bat.  Good news that there are old bats still out there with the plague of WNS killing off so many bats.
Picture
Indian bat foot
The Indiana bat is pretty similar to the little brown bat, but a couple characteristics set them apart. Among them, the foot and calcar.  The foot is quite small, and does not have toe hairs that go beyond the toe nails.  But the definitive feature here is the keeled calcar.  The calcar is a cartilaginous spur that comes off the ankle.  Many bats have this.  But a key feature of some is a flap of skin sticking out from the calcar, known as the keel.  This photo shows a keeled calcar from an Indiana bat.

And after we caught the bats and identified them and got the particulars, we released them.  But we released them with a pile of acoustic monitors handy.  Getting a library of bat calls, with known species, is pretty important these days.  And to make sure the Indiana bat calls were correct, a light stick was glued to the bats.
Picture
An Indiana bat with a light stick glued to it.
Picture
Three or more hands making sure the light stick is glued properly.
And, thus light tagged, the bats were released and the echolocation calls recorded and much good data was in the bag. 

So a monitoring site was surveyed, and a lot of data recorded.  All in one fine weekend of work.
4 Comments
Linda
9/17/2013 11:03:35 pm

I am assuming the light stick falls off after a short while.

Again, interesting blog!

Reply
Keith
9/18/2013 01:50:15 pm

Oh yeah, the glue doesn't last all that long. The light sticks are just glued on with water-soluble glue from a glue stick like what kids take to school for art projects.

And a sorta funny story: Since these light sticks can fall off pretty quickly, sometimes it falls off while you are watching it. So, back in the day we would, at times, put a light stick on a bat while giving public talks at parks and things, and then everyone could actually watch the flight path of the bat. Until the light stick falls off and to the audience it looks like the bat was shot down like a WWII pilot and plunged into the lake (always works better at a lake). There is an audible gasp from the crowd when this happens, but it's just the light stick falling off, the bat is fine.

Reply
Sarah
9/18/2013 10:37:42 am

Hey
So I don't think it's a very good idea to mention the mines name in an online publication.

Reply
Keith
9/18/2013 05:41:23 pm

The mine's name is just a name created a few years ago (probably in 2006) by the folks who first captured bats there. Yes, I was there for that. There are many other mine openings in that general area, so no real problem of this being a specific location.

Reply



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