Bats sing to University researcher
by Andrew Shurtleff
detector in hand, associate professor of biology Kate Jones
(above in foreground) leads a bat watch recently at Beaver
Creek Park in Ivy. About 40 people attended the watch and
had 5-10 bat sightings using the detector, which picks up
high frequency bat calls, similar to sonar, emitted during
feeding. During the watch, Lindy Auberry (below) and Emma
Taylor, 10, reference a brown bat, one of the bat species
By Tony Germanotta, Copyright 2002, The Virginian-Pilot. Reprinted
Kate Jones had run a gantlet of dangling boa constrictors,
braved the millions of animals flying by her hair and was knee
deep in a heaving mix of guano and insects. Plus, the walls of
the cave in Puerto Rico were covered by scorpions. It
was really horrible, the worst place in the world, she said,
a smile breaking across her face. It was great fun.
is a bat person, and, she noted, bat people are completely
love for the furtive, flying denizens of the dark has taken her
to Kenya to help mediate bat problems in huts, to Borneo, a hotbed
of bat diversity, and one night recently to the banks of a lake
outside Charlottesville with a bat detector and about 50 neophytes.
her native England, Jones used to run bat expeditions through
the heart of London, using her detector to show crowds of up to
200 how many bats were hunting above streets Jack the Ripper once
postdoctoral researcher at the University of Virginia, Jones,
29, is helping lead an international project to map bat ranges
on a global computer database that could eventually help save
the most endangered of the animals.
One fifth of the species of mammals on Earth are bats.
The bumblebee bat weighs less than a penny.
The giant flying fox has a wingspan of 6 feet.
Only three of the thousand-plus species of bats, the vampires,
drink blood. They live in Latin America, not Transylvania.
Bats are not blind.
Bats are among the most threatened mammals on the planet.
Half of them are threatened with extinction.
Most bats have only one offspring a year and nurse the pup
until its grown and able to fly and forage on its
A bat can eat more than its body weight in insects every
night up to 2,000 mosquitos per bat.
urgency in her mission. Bats are at the forefront of an environmental
crisis, she said, similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
fifth of the species of mammals on Earth are bats, Jones said.
There are about 1,000 species of bats identified, she said, and
more being found as researchers use new tools to look at old colonies.
bat, the bumblebee, weighs less than a penny and is found only
in Thailand. Another, the giant flying fox, a fruit bat from Indonesia,
has a wingspan of 6 feet.
Many kinds of bats have bodies about the size of a mouse, although
they are not rodents or even from the same branch of the evolutionary
tree, says Jones. Though they fly, they are not related to birds.
also not blind some even feed in daylight. They dont
try to get into your hair that legend might have evolved
from their feeding on the insects that often hover above humans
at dusk and only three of the thousand-plus species, the
vampires, drink blood. They live in Latin America, not Transylvania.
are among the most threatened mammals on the planet. Half of the
worlds bat species are threatened with extinction
a dozen disappeared recently, dozens more species are critically
England, where Jones first discovered her passion as an undergraduate
biology major, bats are protected. If one takes up residence in
your rafters there, you dont call a pest control company.
Someone like Jones comes instead, armed only with information,
and pretty soon youre educated and protective about your
bat, she said.
was astounded by the low regard for bats she discovered when she
came in 2000 for her research job at U.Va.
the bat walk near Charlottesville, one woman asked Jones how she
could get rid of the bats in her house.
explained that house roosts are usually maternity homes where
the mother bat can conserve energy while nursing her pup to adult
bats have only one offspring a year and must nurse until the pup
is grown and able to fly and forage on its own. It takes about
a month for the pup to grow around here, so the visitors are unlikely
to stay beyond summer. After they leave, you can seal up the attic
to keep them from coming back.
soon as they realize that its only for the summer, people
become converts, Jones said. They love their bats.
are also beneficial although the research is just beginning
to document the extent of their value. A bat can eat more than
its body weight in insects every night up to 2,000 mosquitos
all of North Americas bats are insect eaters and, therefore,
come out at dusk and roost at dawn. Theyre just following
the habits of their prey and, at night, there are few predators
to get in the way, Jones said.
reproduction rates and narrow feeding niches make bats especially
vulnerable to environmental changes. Thats what had Jones
in that Puerto Rican cave in 1999. She and other researchers looked
at the impact of Hurricane Georges in 1998 on the bat population.
hurricanes 110 mph winds and heavy flooding resulted in
severe declines in bat populations, especially in species that
relied on nectar and pollen for food, the research found. The
boa constrictors were hanging from the mouth of the cave, fishing
for the remaining bats as they flew in and out.
wound up at U.Va. because a professor there was building a team
to look at evolution and extinction. Jones, who as a bat evolutionary
biologist inhabits an academic niche nearly as narrow as the woolly
bats in Africa that live in spider webs, found a place where she
after she arrived, she heard a commotion in the corridor outside
her tiny office. A bat had become confused and somehow gotten
onto the second floor of Gilmer Hall, home of the biology department.
summoned Jones. She thought it was a joke until she saw the small
brown bat hanging on a wall. She gently caught it in one of her
nets, put it in a cardboard box until dark and turned it loose.
figured that was that.
one day last summer she was working at her computer and looked
up to see a brown bat hanging contentedly from her doorway.
she caught it and put it in a box. When she came back to her office,
the bat had gotten out and was flying around the ceiling. Just
then, she got a call from some prominent professors in New Mexico
inviting her to a conference on bats, rats and birds. She told
them she would have to call back because there was a bat flying
around her office. She has yet to live that down.
they resisted the obvious. Nobody called her Batwoman or Batgirl.
mad, I think, strange and bizarre, she said. The thing
is, a lot of my friends are bat people. They cant say anything.