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The Bat Lab is located at the home of Barbara French in Austin, Texas. Here we record captive bats in artificial roosts and flight cages, documenting social communication and feeding behavior of naïve bats. Red
bat and Yellow bat (Lasiurus borealis/L. intermedius)
Each year mother red bats (Lasiurus borealis) and their pups, as well as many orphaned red bat pups, arrive at the Austin Bat Hospital. Barbara cares for these bats, releasing mothers and their young once they are rehydrated and their injuries healed. Orphaned young are given supplemental feedings until they become proficient at feeding on flying insects in a large flight cage. Insects taken by young at the facility have been identified through examination of feces. Dr. John Whitaker at the University of Indiana in Terra Haute identified both available insect prey, and insects found in droppings of the young collected by Barbara. Results indicate that orphans feed selectively, and feed on insects that are common prey taken by red bats in the wild. This study also demonstrates that the ability of young red bats to feed on flying insects is innate.
The paper will be published in the 2005 issue of Acta Chiropterologica.
Jesse Barber
(pictured above) is a graduate student at the Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His professor is entomologist, Bill Conner. Jesse
studies moths from the family Archtiidae (tiger moths), that respond to bat
echolocation attacks with their own ultrasonic replies. According to
Jesse, there is strong evidence that these sounds warn bats of bad tasting
chemicals in the moth's body--an acoustic warning function. Jesse
is now also studying the how naive red bats learn about the insect prey in
their environment and how they learn to use echolocation to hunt those
insects. He
has duplicated the Austin Bat Hospital's red bat caging and care procedures. A
major percentage
of red bats' diet consists of moths, making them the perfect predators to use
in studying arctiid-bat interactions. Jesse first came to Austin to The Bat Lab
in July of 2004 to learn how to care for red bat orphans.
He followed the procedures we developed to care for these bats to do his
research at the Wake Forest University. Jesse returned to The
Bat Lab again in July of 2005 for a refresher course on captive red bat care.
Above, he tries to coax a juvenile red bat into flight, but it
appears she prefers to cling to his fingertip and rest for the moment instead!
On a
recent trip to
Ecuador,
Jesse
classified the sounds of almost 100 tiger moths that answered
a played-back bat
echolocation
attack.
Back
in the laboratory, he is pitting
learning red bats against different tiger moths in
succession
to determine
if red bats shape acoustic
mimicry rings, much like birds drive visual mimicry amongst butterflies.
Barbara finds that young red bats use social calls to interact with one another and their mother.
In May of 2005, Erin Gillam (pictured below) from the University of Tennesse in Knoxville
records the vocalizations of Barbara's young red bats. Erin Gillam began recording these calls at the Bat
Lab in the Spring of 2004. Dr. Brock Fenton at the University of Western Ontario in Canada will be
analyzing the calls.
 
During the summer of 2005, Barbara will be collecting tiny tissue samples from
red bat pups. Samples were also collected from Barbara's red bat young by
students of Dr. Gary McCracken
at the University of Tennessee, Knoxsville, in 2004. The McCracken lab
will do DNA work on these samples to determine if the young born in a single
liter have different fathers.
Are you a
student also interested in documenting behavior of naive red or yellow bats as they learn
to feed in a flight cage? If so, you are welcome to do so in Barbara's
flight cage with the orphaned pups she receives each year in June and
July. Requirement: Students MUST assist Barbara in caring for the
pups while they are here. (Note: Red bat orphans are available each
season; Yellow bat orphans are not available every year.)
Mexican free-tailed
bat (Tadarida brasiliensis)
Below,
Gary McCracken's student, Amy Turmelle, from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville,
and her assistant Sarah Duncan, assist Barbara in collecting blood from
her captive free-tail colony in June of 2005. After the blood was drawn,
Barbara vaccinated each bat against rabies. Ten days later, blood was
drawn again from each bat. Blood samples were sent to the United States
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to determine if the bats
developed a rabies titer just as a vaccinated dog or cat does. Amanda
Lollar began vaccinating her bats against rabies several years ago and Barbara
now vaccinates all her bats as well. This information will be of great
value to rehabbers and researchers who work with captive bats.
Below, graduate student Teh-Sheng Ma from the Institute of Neurosciences at the University of Texas, Austin
is working with Barbara at Bat World to document social communication of the Mexican free-tailed
bat. Many of these calls were originally described by Amanda Lollar
and later by Amanda and Barbara. Sheng is recording and describing these
calls in great detail. We find the free-tails have a complex “language,”
including courtships songs that contain signature syllables that vary from one male to another.
Rachel Page and Ruili Xie, both graduate students at U.T., have also recorded
calls from Barbara's captive free-tail colony.
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Amy Turmelle
has also been determining paternity of young born in the captive free-tail colony.
(Results so far suggest "Puff" is the favored male in the colony at
the moment.) This information will be used by Teh-Sheng to look at mate selection. For example, how do the courtship calls of successful males (those that father young) differ from the calls of unsuccessful males?
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Barbara is always interested in assisting graduate students document bat behavior in non-invasive studies, by granting them access to bats at the The Bat Lab facility. Barbara can be reached regarding prospective projects at: batdoc@concentric.net
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