Monitoring Bat Activity Over Water And Land Routes — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

Instructions

Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
A clear description of the methods used to achieve the purpose or goals for the work.
A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

Presenter photographs should be head and shoulder shots comparable to passport photos.

Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

Monitoring Bat Activity Over Water And Land Routes

Name: Alex Nelson
Major: Biology & Music
Hometown: Red Wing, MN
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: SURE
Funding: SURE

Name: Sami Beard
Major: Biology
Hometown: Valparaiso, IN
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: SURE
Funding: SURE

Abstract

Wisconsin is home to seven common bat species and three of the major bat hibernacula in the Midwest. To understand habitat use in the summer months and how best to monitor use over time, we monitored bat activity from June-August 2012 in five different habitat sites in Kenosha County, WI. We compared bat activity levels among these sites and between different route types. Routes were trails on land, or routes from within a body of water. Five different habitat sites were surveyed with an Anabat SD2 bat detector. The bats’ echolocation calls were analyzed using AnalookW software and were classified as being from either a high frequency (>35 kHz) bat or a low frequency (<35 kHz) bat. We found more overall bat activity when monitoring from water routes than land. When separated into phonic groups, there was more high frequency bat activity detected from water routes. When comparing route types, land routes showed significantly more low frequency bat activity. The results indicate that there is a potential bias in estimating levels of bat activity depending on route type. These results could inform how organizations define acoustic monitoring protocols when they are used to estimate general levels of bat activity before and after populations become affected by White Nose Syndrome.

Poster file