At the North American Society for Bat Research (NASBR) 2026, Heather presented her poster, “Community Perspectives, Hunting Practices, and Conservation Behaviors Tied to the Mariana Fruit Bat (Fanihi),” while Tigga spoke at the One Health symposium.
Heather spent this past summer interviewing local community members as part of a preliminary study on human-bat relationships in the Marianas. At the conference, she shared emerging themes that highlighted evolving cultural connections to the Mariana Fruit Bat, intergenerational knowledge transmission, conservation participation, and the perceived impacts of environmental change on the species!
Tigga’s talk focused on developing frameworks for a One Health Action Plan for species at the human–bat interface, highlighting the human activities that drive spillover risk.
That wasn’t the end of the fun! Colorado State University also invited Tigga to give a colloquium talk on bat diversity and anthropogenic loss in the species-rich Paleotropics. Her talk brought the ecological and evolutionary dimensions of bat diversity of that region into focus, exploring how human disturbances affect it.
