Center for North American Bat Research and Conservation

Current Research Projects

Impacts of Urbanization on Bats:
Nearly 80% of people in the US now live in urban areas, and these urban areas are rapidly taking over the countryside. For example Indiana loses about 101,000 acres per year to some type of development. In coordination with the Indianapolis Airport Authority, we are currently conducting a large-scale study of bats near the Indianapolis International Airport that is providing new insights into how this development impacts bats and other types of wildlife. For example we have found that new housing additions are a barrier to movements of both Indiana bats (a federally-endangered species) and evening bats (a state-endangered species), but are freely crossed by the big brown bat that thrives in urban areas.

Population Demographics of Bats:
Most available data suggest bats are declining throughout much of the world. Unfortunately, we know very little about the factors that cause population increases/decreases such as individual survival rates across years, how many young survive to breeding age, and causes of death among bats. Thus, the ISU bat center is working to bring together banding data from throughout the eastern US. We are also working in conjunction with the US Geological Survey to develop genetic mark-recapture techniques that will allow us to “band” bats without ever touching them. Together these approaches promise to provide new insights into the population dynamics of bats.

Insecticides and Bats:
Bats in Indiana are exclusively insectivorous, and this potentially exposes them to pesticides used in agriculture. Preliminary data collected by our lab in conjunction with the US Fish and Wildlife Service has indicated that at least some bats are being impacted by pesticides. Because we have access to large numbers of newly dead bats (from the state rabies lab) we have a unique opportunity to study this important conservation issue.

Diet of Insectivorous Bats:
Much of what is known about the diet of bats in the United States is the result of work done either in or in association with our lab. We have found that bat diets vary across seasons, and that many local bats feed primarily on agricultural pests. We are now conducting experiments aimed at understanding the digestive efficiency of bats, which will tell us a lot about why the consistently select specific types of foods.

Rabies in Bats:
For more than 40 years our faculty has been receiving the carcass of each individual bat that is submitted to the state as potentially rabid. In coordination with the Centers for Disease Control, and the Indiana Board of Health, we are working to understand which bats are most likely to be rabid and how the disease moves through populations of bats.

Biogeography of Bats:
Biogeographers study of the spatial distribution of organisms. We are currently using GIS-based techniques to examine distribution patterns of bats in the Eastern United States. Among the issues we are addressing is whether there are broad geographic patterns of abundance among both different species and sexes. For example, for many years biologists have noted that Red and Hoary bats seem to be sexually segregated in summer. We suspect this is also the case in other species as well, and are also looking for patterns in the abundance of bats related to the amount of forest cover, proximity of highways, and many other spatial attributes.