Texas Tech Annual Biological Sciences Symposium – congrats to Joe

Posted on March 26, 2013 by tiggak

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.

Maria’s paper in Biotropica

Posted on March 12, 2013 by tiggak

Congratulations to Maria on her recent publication, which is now available online in Biotropica:

Sagot, M, Rodríguez-Herrera, B., Stevens, R.D. (2013). Macro and Microhabitat Associations of the Peter’s Tent-Roosting Bat (Uroderma bilobatum): Human-Induced Selection and Colonization? Biotropica. DOI: 10.1111/btp.12034

3rd International Berlin Bat Meeting and Max Planck Institute

Posted on March 12, 2013 by tiggak

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.

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

Posted on February 21, 2013 by tiggak

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

Posted on February 8, 2013 by tiggak

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.

Visitors from UC Davis and LIPI

Posted on February 8, 2013 by tiggak

The lab had a great time this past week hosting Sigit Wiantoro and Alan Hitch from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and UC Davis. Sigit also gave a talk on Indonesian bats as part of the department’s Ecology, Evolution and Behavior Seminar series that was very well received.

NASBR 2012 in San Juan, Puerto Rico

Posted on November 6, 2012 by tiggak

Tigga, Marina and Maria had a great time at NASBR during the last week of October. Tigga gave a talk entitled “The Role of Extreme Bandwidths in Frequency-modulated Echolocation Calls: A Tribute to Björn Siemers” in the acoustics session, which also featured a paper that Maria was a co-author on “Acoustic Behavior at Roosts of Two Distantly Related Disc-Winged Bats” (speaker was Karina Montero), and Marina’s poster “Comparing Three Bat Acoustic Sampling Methodologies for Large-scale Surveys” was very well received. Liz Siles from the Baker lab presented an oral paper in the student award section”New Insights on the Phylogenetic Diversity within the Genus Micronycteris (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae)” (so had 15 whole minutes!!).

Tigga went on a slightly disappointing quest one evening to see Noctilio up close – it rained :0( – and I’m really sorry but Eptesicus fuscus just isn’t much of a substitute. However it was interesting to learn about the NOCTILIO project – an education research initiative. Keep up the great work!

The next meeting is combined with IBRC and is in Costa Rica (hurray!– Maria as to find me an Ectophylla alba – I still haven’t seen one).

Functional Ecology paper now in print

Posted on October 21, 2012 by tiggak

This article looking at the role of broadband FM sweeps used by bats that forage in dense clutter came out online in July, but is now in print in the October issue of FE.

Schmieder, D., Kingston, T., Rosli, H., & Siemers, B. (2012). Sensory constraints on prey detection performance in an ensemble of vespertilionid understorey rainforest bats (Kerivoulinae, Murininae). Functional Ecology 26: 1043-1053. DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2435.2012.02024.x

There is a video for the “lay audience” that explains the work here

EEB Seminar & SEJ

Posted on October 20, 2012 by tiggak

A busy week for the lab — Maria gave an excellent presentation to the TTU Ecology Behavior and Evolution seminar series on Wednesday entitled “Understanding Ecological Effects on Social Behavior: Insights From Tent-roosting Bats”. A summary of her PhD research which exemplified the integration of ecology, behavior and genetic approaches at levels that ranged from social groups to the entire phylogeny. Didn’t hurt that she had Ectophylla alba photos!

Tigga, Marina and Kaitlan had fun on the trip with the Society of Environmental Journalists down to Carlsbad Caverns, and Tigga was then a speaker at the Lunch round-table session on Thursday, leading a discussion on “Bats and humans – is there a future?”

Tigga, Maria and Marina are off to Puerto Rico for the NASBR next week.

Joining in with Society of Environmental Journalists Conference

Posted on October 16, 2012 by tiggak

The SEJ’s 22nd Annual Conference will be in Lubbock this week, and Tigga, Marina and Kaitlin will be guest-starring in their ” From Stones to the Stars at Carlsbad Caverns” tour on the Thursday. Tigga will be a speaker for one of their “Network Lunches” on the Friday, for a table discussing bat conservation issues (although if they don’t change the current proposed title, I’ll back out!).

Kingston Lab

Conservation ecology of bats