Jineth Berrío-Martínez (MSc in Biology) is a researcher from Colombia who arrived in April has been travelling around Panama to find additional wild vampire bat colonies. She is working on development of biting ability in young vampire bats. My research interests include tropical biology, population ecology, reproductive biology, evolution, and conservation. Early in my career … Continue reading Team Vampire, Spring 2017
Category: News
Latest paper: social bet-hedging in vampire bats (and two other recent and related studies)
Our latest paper here. Also some early press here. There are actually three recent papers on social networks and the benefits of network size in primates (by Laurent Brent and co-authors), songbirds (by Josh Firth and co-authors), and bats (by me and co-authors): Family network size and survival across the lifespan of female macaques by L. … Continue reading Latest paper: social bet-hedging in vampire bats (and two other recent and related studies)
Latest paper: Reproductive seasonality, sex ratio and philopatry in Argentina’s common vampire bats
It can be found here. Summary: 35 years of field observations 13,642 mist-net captures and 181 whole roost captures vampire bats in Argentina (near the southern limit of their range) have a reproductive season (unlike most other places) we have new records for oldest wild vampire bats: 16 and 17 years we corroborated prior evidence … Continue reading Latest paper: Reproductive seasonality, sex ratio and philopatry in Argentina’s common vampire bats
A new field site in Panama
I am hoping to develop some new long-term field sites for future work on vampire bats. On March 27, I traveled with Austin Garrido, Rob Mies (director of the Organization for Bat Conservation), his daughter Georgia Mies, and labmates May Dixon, Rachel Crisp, Katharina Eggert, Hugo Narizano, and Julia Vrtilek to Lake Bayano, a two-hour drive … Continue reading A new field site in Panama
Update: three golden opportunities
Now - October 2017, the Smithsonian Institute has awarded me with a fellowship to finish collecting data from lab and field experiments on vampire bat social behavior with Rachel Page at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. November 2017 - August 2018, the Humboldt Foundation has awarded me a fellowship to learn more about social network analysis, resampling … Continue reading Update: three golden opportunities
‘Team Vampire’ Fall 2016
Julia Vrtilek (Biology, Amherst College, 2015) is studying the development of grooming and food-sharing networks in young-of-the-year vampire bats. What are your interests? I find it fascinating and awe-inspiring that “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” I’m interested in evolutionary biology, ecology, and animal … Continue reading ‘Team Vampire’ Fall 2016
Summer 2016 updates
Our two undergraduate interns Yeli Garcia (Earlham) and Emily Dong (Cornell) just completed their independent projects and finished their seasons in Panama. Yeli's project was entitled "Guano scent as a cue for roost-finding in vampire bats" and Emily's was "Co-feeding and food sharing in vampire bats". They both worked hard, did a terrific job, and I'm … Continue reading Summer 2016 updates
Recent media article about vampire bats and friendship
Sapiens Magazine just put out an article about vampire bats and friendship. The author Leah Shaffer did a great job, probably the most accurate media story on the vampire bats I can remember. Usually, journalists get a lot wrong, but they did a great job fact-checking this one. Also, below is an edited transcript of … Continue reading Recent media article about vampire bats and friendship
Summer interns for the vampire bat project
Every season, two interns will be assisting the vampire bat food-sharing project at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama. These are our two STRI-funded interns for Summer 2016. Emily Dong is a major in the Biology and Society, and will be starting her third year at Cornell (my alma mater). Emily is always positive, … Continue reading Summer interns for the vampire bat project
New paper on vampire bat communication
Our newest paper is Common vampire bat contact calls attract past food-sharing partners in the journal Animal Behaviour. You can download the paper for free until June 12, 2016 here at this link: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1SwLKmjLdkSa It's a simple playback experiment where we disentangled kinship and food sharing as predictors of a bat's attraction to calls of different individuals. … Continue reading New paper on vampire bat communication
Carter Lab 