Winter tends to be the off season for bat ecologists. And why not? By early October, most surveyors are pretty frazzled. In any case, bats hibernate in the winter don't they? So why waste time and effort 'looking' for them? Any results are likely to be abnormal and therefore incapable of informing anything useful.
Research Project | Geolocator tagging Bluethroats in Israel
Posted in:
Birds, Company News, Israel, Migration, Research
Date posted: 30 March 2016
In February this year (2016) , Alar Ecology took part in a study of wintering Bluethroats in Israel. Geolocator tags were attached to 15 birds at the IBRCE Park in Eilat. Attempts will be made to recapture these birds in December so that data revealing their breeding range can be downloaded for detailed analysis.
Catching Great Crested Newts with the Dewsbury Box Trap | Guest article by Lucy Bartlett
Posted in:
Amphibians, Great Crested Newt, Ponds, Research, Survey Methods, Surveys and Assessment
Date posted: 30 November 2015
For the last three years, Lucy Bartlett has been working on a project to test the effectiveness of box traps, or more specifically the Dewsbury Box Trap, to survey for and capture great crested newts.
Gleaning bats use acoustic shadows to detect insect prey
Posted in:
Bats, Biodiversity, Dormouse, Research
Date posted: 25 August 2015
Scientists from QMUL and the University of Bristol have found that, instead of searching for prey directly, certain neotropical bat species have an intimate knowledge a their home environment. This includes a detailed acoustic profile of individual leaves! When an insect lands on a familiar leaf, the normal echoes are interrupted. This creates an "acoustic shadow", which provides a very strong signal to the hunting bat (previous studies had concluded that these bats must detect prey by sight, smell and sound).