- Imran Razik, Jorge Lopez Donado, Maddy Foote, Basti Stockmaier, May Dixon and I captured familiar and unfamiliar female vampire bats from several different sites to create three captive colonies in Panama.
- Imran, Jorge, and Maddy are currently in Panama conducting a long-term experiment on partner choice during relationship formation in vampire bats.
- Imran was awarded a Smithsonian Institute Predoctoral Fellowship. He also had a chapter from his PhD dissertation accepted at Biology Letters: “Forced proximity promotes the formation of enduring cooperative relationships in vampire bats” (preprint).
- Postdoc Basti Stockmaier was awarded a Smithsonian Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship. In Panama, he conducted pilot studies on social contact networks and microbe sharing within and between bat species. We are also writing a paper on the effects of rabies on vampire bat behavior.
- Postdoc May Dixon submitted a short note from her PhD on “Long-term memory in frog-eating bats” (preprint).
- After four years of delays and challenges, we are hoping to finally create a captive colony of vampires at The Ohio State University this July. Fingers crossed.
Carter Lab 