Category Archives: Uncategorized

Visitor from Auburn University – Dr Wendy Hood

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The semester ended with a wonderful visit from Dr Wendy Hood – Tigga’s academic sister from grad school days, now an assistant prof at Auburn University. Wendy studies nutritional ecology of vertebrate growth, reproduction, and performance and gave the departmental seminar  ‘Investigating the roles of nutrition, lactation, and bone metabolism in reproductive performance’, as well as going over some of her bat research in our lab meeting. We then found time for a quick jolly to Caprock Canyon…..

Wendy in Caprock Canyon

Wendy in Caprock Canyon

Tigga and Wendy at Caprock Canyon -- grad school sisters since Fall 1994!

Tigga and Wendy at Caprock Canyon — grad school sisters since Fall 1994!

Western Bat Working Group Meeting in Santa Fe

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The first week of April, Marina and Nick went to the Western Bat Working Group Biannual Meeting in Santa Fe, NM. The meeting was geared to updating the Western Bat Species Regional Priority Matrix in the face of new threats such as climate change and white-nose syndrome. Break-out groups for different Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) worked together to assess the scope and severity of different threats for every bat species in the western United States. Assessing threat levels for all the western bat species is a difficult process but worthwhile if we want to effectively manage and protect bats! Marina presented her poster “Comparing three bat acoustic sampling methodologies for large-scale surveys” and received lots of good feedback from researchers interested in conducting mobile acoustic surveys.

Nick was awarded a seat in a three day Wildlife Acoustics Bat Detector Training Course, led by Dr. Cori Lausen, through the Bob Berry Scholarship Fund. The course immediately followed the Western Bat Working Group Meeting, and covered the use and deployment of the SM2BAT+ and the EM3, along with an introduction to call analysis in Kaleidoscope Pro, SonoBat, and AnalookW. Nick is very thankful for this award, which has helped him become more knowledgeable in the set-up and deployment of these Song Meters, which he will use during his acoustic surveys beginning this summer in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico.

Visitor from the Max Planck Institute

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It was a real delight to have Daniela Schmieder visiting for a week at the beginning of the month. Dani worked with myself Julie and Ain in Malaysia a few years ago, where she was looking at echolocation performance in Kerivoula and Murina species for her Diploma (got some very nice papers out of it too, which you can learn more about here and here). She is now finishing up her PhD work on the role of functional morphology in resource partitioning of syntopic European bat species (primarily Rhinolophus species), at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen (which I visited earlier this year) where she is part of the late Bjoern Siemers’ Sensory Ecology Group.

She gave the lab a great presentation on her PhD research, and worked with me on one of her dissertation publications, but there was plenty of time for fun, as we did a day hike out to the Lighthouse at Palo Duro Canyon. Hopefully we will catch up with her at the IBRC (International Bat Research Conference) in Costa Rica, later this year. Below are some pics of her visit….

At the Lighthouse -- what cool bat nerds. From left to right, Tigga, Dani, Julie, Maria, Ain and Danny

At the Lighthouse — what cool bat nerds. From left to right, Tigga, Dani, Julie, Maria, Ain and Danny (honorary bat nerd) – 6 people, 5 nationalities 🙂 — Joe was studying for his quals or we would have had a sixth.

Lighthouse in the background, Dani (the tall one) with Julie and Ain. Intraspecific variation in action

Lighthouse in the background, Dani (the tall one) with Julie (right) and Ain (left).

Guns up! On campus with Julie (left) and Ain (right)

Learning Tech traditions – on campus with Julie (left) and Ain (right)

Congratulations to Kendra – one of 12 students awarded the 2013 Texas Tech Students of Integrated Scholarship!

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Great news from Kendra — well done! Below she reports on this prestigious scholarship:

I am one of 12 students awarded the 2013 Texas Tech Students of Integrated Scholarship.   This scholarship spotlights “students who have embraced active learning experiences both within and external to the environs of Texas Tech University”.  Awardees are featured in All Things Texas Tech issued by the Provost Office at Texas Tech University.  Link to list of awardees: http://www.depts.ttu.edu/provost/attt/2013/03/studentscholars13.php.  Link to my profile: http://www.depts.ttu.edu/provost/attt/2013/03/studentscholars13/kendra_phelps.php

 

Texas Tech Annual Biological Sciences Symposium – congrats to Joe

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Last weekend was the Texas Tech Annual Biological Sciences Symposium. Julie, Ain and Joe all gave oral presentations. Joe won the Warren Ballard Award for best oral presentation in the Resource Management and Conservation session for his paper entitled “The ecology and potential value of bat coffee in biodiversity conservation in southwestern Sumatra”. Well done Joe! Maria and Julie both served as judges. It was a super event, and it was delightful to have Dr Richard Stevens return to Tech to give the plenary talk.

3rd International Berlin Bat Meeting and Max Planck Institute

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Tigga had a great time at the 3rd International Berlin Bat Meeting: Bats in the Anthropocene, where she opened the session on education and outreach with a plenary talk entitled “From research to outreach: integrative approaches and a call to arms” which was well received. The conference was a great success — congratulations to the organizers Christian Voigt and Ana G. Popa-Lisseanu.

Tigga at the conference banquet in the famous dinosaur hall of the Museum of Natural History in Berlin.

Tigga at the conference banquet in the famous dinosaur hall of the Museum of Natural History in Berlin.

She then went on to give a seminar (“Bat Diversity and Conservation in SE Asia”) at the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology, hosted by Daniela Schmieder of the late Bjoern Siemers’ Sensory Ecology Group. It was a marvelous trip all round!

Texas Society of Mammalogists Meeting

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Last weekend, Maria and Marina went to the Texas Society of Mammalogists (TSM) annual meeting in Junction, TX. Marina presented a poster entitled “Comparing three bat acoustic sampling methodologies for large-scale surveys” and she got great comments and feedback from researchers actively pursuing bat surveys in various states. Maria was a judge for the TSM oral presentation and Packard (overall best oral presentation) awards. At this meeting Molly McDonough (from Baker’s lab) won the overall best presentation award for a paper on African rodents entitled “Phylogenetic relationships of southern African rodents of the genus Gerbilliscus (Muridae: Gerbillinae).

 

Article in Malaysian Applied Biology

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Last semester, Dr Zubaid gave the keynote address at UPM regarding the activities of the bat group at the local, regional and international levels. A number of people were impressed and said that it could be used as a model for forming groups to study other animal groups. As a consequence, the editorial board of the journal Malaysian Applied Biology asked us to put together a review of our activities. With help from Julie and Ain, we got something together for the December issue.

Kingston, T., Juliana, S., Nurul-Ain, E., Hashim, R. & Zubaid, A (2012). The Malaysian Bat Conservation Research Unit: From a national model to an international network. Malaysian Applied Biology, 41(2): 1–10. 

The article can be found on my Researchgate page.