In 2016 and 2017, we captured female vampire bats and then released them back into the wild almost two years later to track their wild association networks. During their time in captivity, 12 of the females gave birth to pups. Would these captive-born bats be able to survive in the wild? Jineth Berrío-Martínez conducted an experiment … Continue reading Can a captive-born vampire bat feed on a live animal?
Category: News
Lab updates: July 2019
At the end of May, Rachelle Adams and I finished teaching the course "Tropical Behavioral Ecology and Evolution" in Panama. Each student worked on an individual research project and also wrote a blog post about another student's project. Tropical Behavioral Ecology and Evolution, May 2019 In June, students Imran Razik, Bridget Brown, and David Girbino … Continue reading Lab updates: July 2019
Lab updates: May 2019
PhD student Imran Razik was awarded both a Short-term Fellowship from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and a Student Research Grant from the Animal Behavior Society. He will be studying urinary oxytocin as a predictor of variation in grooming and food-sharing between both old (familiar) and new (unfamiliar) individuals. MSc student Bridget Brown was awarded … Continue reading Lab updates: May 2019
Proximity sensors, preprints, and grants
Simon Ripperger will be joining our team this summer in Panama. Simon recently published the first paper on his new method for sampling dynamic social networks of whole groups of bats in the field. The paper in Biology Letters is entitled "Proximity sensors on common noctule bats reveal evidence that mothers guide juveniles to roosts … Continue reading Proximity sensors, preprints, and grants
New paper on relatedness and social networks across different bats
Last year, I attended a symposium hosted by Peter Kappeler at the German Primate Center on the topic of "social complexity". A bunch of evolutionary and behavioral ecologists from different backgrounds got together to argue about stuff like 'How should we define social complexity?', 'Is the brain size of a species a good of measure … Continue reading New paper on relatedness and social networks across different bats
Nov 2018 updates
Events: Nov 7-9 at Ohio State University: Modeling and Analysis of Dynamic Social Networks (I'm giving the first talk at 1pm) Nov 8 Seminar: "Wireless tracking sensor network give novel insights into the (social) life of bats" by Simon Ripperger. (1:00–2:00pm, Room 110, Orton Hall, The Ohio State University). Simon is visiting my lab this … Continue reading Nov 2018 updates
Updates: June 2018
A few updates: I'm delighted to announce my first three graduate students at Ohio State University: Bridget Brown, Theresa Chen, and Imran Razik. Read more about them here. Theresa and Imran have both won competitive fellowships from the university. We published a study showing that younger vampire bats are more exploratory than adults. They are far … Continue reading Updates: June 2018
Fieldwork: Lamanai, Belize
This week I’ve been working with a team of bat researchers in Lamanai, Belize (an archaeological site of the ruins of a Mayan city). We are collecting data for a study on the effects of sickness behavior on social associations in wild vampire bats. Last year, PhD student Sebastian "Basti" Stockmaier and I conducted two … Continue reading Fieldwork: Lamanai, Belize
Some pics from Panama and Germany
I'm finally seeing bats flying around here at dusk in Germany, and for the first time I'm missing Panama a bit. But it's not that I don't like Panama, I just love where I am now! I've been trying to make the most of my time here, and that's my excuse for not writing a blogpost … Continue reading Some pics from Panama and Germany
Tracking our vampire bats after they are released into the wild
After almost 2 years of cooperation experiments in captivity, we are now attempting to monitor the social relationships of our vampire bats as we release them back into the wild. We are hoping to track bat-bat and bat-cow encounters. To do this, we are attaching networked proximity sensors to 23 previously captive and captive-born bats … Continue reading Tracking our vampire bats after they are released into the wild
