This blog is about what its like to be a bat researcher with a little bit about the things I love sprinkled throughout: bats (of course/understood), biology, music as well as the less expected.
Bats and Academics: How Do Scientists Perceive Their Object of Study?
This is the title of a new article that was just published in PLOS One (here) by Christophe Boëte and Serge Morand. The article (based on results from an international survey of bat biologists) suggests that many bat biologists have reached certain conclusions about what the risks to bats worldwide due to environmental change are and that the key next step is communicating this information to the public.
I think this is the key point (see below) that is worth consideration. This conclusion is not surprising but is extremely important. However, what is the most effective way to communicate this information? Reaching out to school-aged children (k12) seems to be one of the focal groups as are students in classrooms of bat biologist but is this the ideal way forward? Twitter and other online forums are great but I think people usually communicate with like-minded people.
I highly suggest giving the article a look and I would be keen to know what people might suggest a proper response to the author's 'call to action' might be!
Educational poster on bats from Bat Conservation Trust in the UK (here).
Abstract (Boëte and Morand 2016)
Bats are associated with conflicting perceptions among humans, ranging from affection to disgust. If these attitudes can be associated with various factors among the general public (e.g. social norms, lack of knowledge), it is also important to understand the attitude of scientists who study bats. Such reflexive information on the researchers community itself could indeed help designing adequate mixed communication tools aimed at protecting bats and their ecosystems, as well as humans living in their vicinity that could be exposed to their pathogens. Thus, we conducted an online survey targeting researchers who spend a part of their research activity studying bats. Our aim was to determine (1) how they perceive their object of study, (2) how they perceive the representation of bats in the media and by the general population, (3) how they protect themselves against pathogen infections during their research practices, and (4) their perceptions of the causes underlying the decline in bat populations worldwide. From the 587 completed responses (response rate of 28%) having a worldwide distribution, the heterogeneity of the scientists’ perception of their own object of study was highlighted. In the majority of cases, this depended on the type of research they conducted (i.e. laboratory versus field studies) as well as their research speciality. Our study revealed a high level of personal protection equipment being utilised against pathogens during scientific practices, although the role bats play as reservoirs for a number of emerging pathogens remains poorly known.Our results also disclosed the unanimity among specialists in attributing a direct role for humans in the global decline of bat populations, mainly via environmental change, deforestation, and agriculture intensification.Overall, the present study suggests the need for better communication regarding bats and their biology, their role within the scientific community, as well as in the general public population. As a consequence, increased knowledge regarding scientists’ perceptions of bats should improve the role scientists play in influencing the perception of bats by the general public.
Boëte C, Morand S (2016) Bats and Academics: How Do Scientists Perceive Their Object of Study? PLoS ONE 11(11): e0165969. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0165969
In reading about one of my new heros: Viripi Luumma of the University of Sheffield and pre-industrial Finn dataset fame - I ran across this inspiring post from the Guaridan I wanted to share!
If you have ever seen the amazing footage of bats leaving or entering caves you might have been curious what it is like to flim thousands of animals all flying around your camera?
Today I saw a great video on this topic and was excited to share it here. What makes it extra special is that in addition to great images of bats in the wild and in a wind-tunnel the person explaining everything is someone who's presentations and videos I've seen before. AMAZING STUFF!
Interviewed is Nickolay Hristov from Winston-Salem State University. Read about some of his ongoing projects by clicking this (link).
From Hristov's STEM page I thought this was a great list of questions that have been addressed in bats using high-speed video recording
"Questions scientists have answered by filming bats in high-speed:
A Twitter Storm hit the internet in response to a comment from Tim Hunt of U. College London who has since lost his job over the comment.
i.e. “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry."
Distractingly sexy pipetting at Organ Pipe Cactus National Park
A few links are below if you were not witness to the storm:
You can read the new White Nose Syndrome (WNS) fact sheet here.
Impacted : 7 species including of which are 2 endangered
Still no disease has been seen in tree bats and a few others that have been found with the fungus (Pseudogymnoascus destructans).
(*I will try to look into this last aspect more for future blogs as understanding how/why certain species may not be exhibiting disease is key for ascertaining the impacts of the fungus).
Another Ted talk this one on what the genome of bats can tell us about bat evolution.
Below the talk can also be accessed by clicking this (Link)
From the Ted website:
"In Western society, bats are often characterized as creepy, even evil. Zoologist Emma Teeling encourages us to rethink our attitude toward bats, whose unique and fascinating biology gives us insight into our own genetic makeup. (Filmed at TEDxDublin.)"
"Dame Stephanie Shirley is the most successful tech entrepreneur you never heard of. In the 1960s, she founded a pioneering all-woman software company in the UK, which was ultimately valued at $3 billion, making millionaires of 70 of her team members. In this frank and often hilarious talk, she explains why she went by “Steve,” how she upended the expectations of the time, and shares some sure-fire ways to identify ambitious women …"
An intersting podcast/article on human echolocation and 'What is it like to be a bat' was published in Nature News recently (here).
"
What is it like to be a bat?
Bat
ecologists have made it their life’s work to find out, philosophers
argue we may never understand, and one blind woman knows better than
anyone. In the first episode of Audiofile, Nature’s new
sound science series, find out how much we can really know about what
it’s like to be a bat, and what it tell us about the limits of human
perception.
This is the first podcast from the new Audiofile - and is quite nice. I except if you check back there will soon be more podcasts relating to sound (here).
Whale communication is known to be diverse and eleaborate and at the Smithsonian they have found: diet, hearing and bones (inner ear and jaw) all lead to whales communicating as they do.
It is high time to update a bit on the lab work I've been doing with fruit flies. First and formost fly work is fairly time demanding because they are constantly growing, reproducing and thus need a lot of care. To start things out let me introduce their larvae in the form a a video. Here they are on agar/fruit juice plates eatting and as you might suppose - growing!
(*Note I am in the process of changing the larvae video-> please check back!)
I've decided they are rather cute and thus I'll include the David Bowie music video that I think fits their movements well!
Still more research news but not about bats (granted I am making preparations to go to the field soon)....
I am excited to report that my paper on Sonoran Desert rodent diets is accepted for publication and will be published by the journal Oecologia.
This paper reports my findings using stable isotopes of Carbon to track the use of cacti and other plants such as grasses (C3 plants) by several different species of rodents. Research was done at the amazingly beautiful Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that boasts beautiful cacti and many migrant bird species.
It is exciting to know this work will be published and we even suggested a really cool photo for the cover showing woodrat (Neotoma) tunnels chewed into a saguaro cactus. Fingers crossed!
You can see the location of the ecosystem classified as Sonoran below.
Description (from UT):The Freshman Research Initiative offers first year students the opportunity to initiate and engage in authentic research experiences in chemistry, biochemistry, nanotechnology, molecular biology, physics, astronomy and computer sciences while being supported and mentored by faculty and graduate students. The FRI creates new scientists like no program before it and at a scale that has never been attempted. It provides an authentic research experience and all its benefits to a large number of students early in their careers. It completely transforms students' lives by empowering them to conduct and contribute to modern science—design experiments, perform data analyses and publish peer-reviewed papers—as freshmen. They start becoming innovators their first year.
July 2015**Update: our paper is out and we have engaged in a discussion with Marques, Garcia, and Ames. See their letter here and ours here!
Exciting news is that my favorite journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution lovingly known as just 'TREE' by many just accepted my paper written with my postdoc adviser about sperm storage and how it is defined!
Look for it in May (online at least). Keep your eyes here and it should show up...
While you wait the main take home messages:
Sperm
storage is ubiquitous in internal fertilizing animals.
To
understand the evolution of sperm storage we must study adaptations that
result from selection on males separate from those that result from
selection on females.
Adaptations
for sperm storage in males can facilitate sperm storage inside the females.
Careful
consideration of different criteria to demonstrate sperm storage will
allow for more comparative studies.
We suggest
a sperm storage index that will inform such evolutionary studies.
A new study on Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasilensis) published this month reveals that bats are not always kind to each other when it comes to foraging behaviors. These bats that use echolocation to forage for food are deploying strategies to prevent other individuals from successfully finding food. How these bats are doing this has been compared to the jamming technology of a military aircraft.
Not always nice - individual Mexican free-tailed bat may impede others of the same species from being able to find food using echolocation by 'jamming' their echolocation calls.
The interference that these bats create is called jamming and researchers Aaron Corocoran and William Conner from Wake Forest University have found that individuals will jam the call of others during competition for their nightly hunt for food (namely insects).
I’m not sure when it was that I fell in love with the chanteuse Stevie
Nicks but it certainly was at least in high school when I first heard the
moving song ‘Dreams’.Stevie is but one magnificent
part of the musical tapestry that makes up this beautiful song.The composition of this and other songs by
Fleetwood Mac is haunting and somehow inspiring - and so too is the fairy
godmother of female rock stars - Miss Stevie Nicks.
Fairy muse for women in the sciences?
So why is someone like Stevie Nicks relevant to a blog post on a blog about
biology, bats and all things science?Stevie represents the courageousness, strength and powerhouse attitude
required to succeed in the sciences and she does all this as a feminine muse
that grasps at the dreams and hearts of most of those who hear her music.She’s talented - sure - but from everything I’ve
read and seen she also works VERY hard.Indeed
– I think that the description often used for James Brown fits – she is ‘the
hardest working woman in music!’But what
gets me the most is that she does not force herself into an over sexualized nor
into a ‘gotta be a man to succeed in a man’s world’ persona. And this - has historically been a challenge
for women in a variety of fields including academia.
No Miley Cyrus get-ups to grab attention- in fact I'd call this outfit downright graceful and even a little masculine!
An amazing book that touches on the topic but in the context of a WOMAN
SCIENTIST is ‘the Molecules of Emotion’ by Dr. Candace Pert. Which tells the inspirational story of Dr.
Pert’s career in the sciences which includes the discovery of opiate receptors,
being passed up for a Nobel Prize and what it was like to be a woman in the sciences
wearing ‘the uniform’ i.e. looking as unfeminine as possible to ‘blend in’ to
the man’s world that academia was at that time.
The late Dr. Candace Pert
To me at least there is as common thread between Dr. Pert’s and Stevie’s
stories both were at one time or another in the shadow of someone else- in Dr. Pert's case it was her adviser and for Stevie's it was Lindsay Buckingham.Stevie
started out as one part of the duo ‘Buckingham and Nicks.’The band was far from a success and Stevie
was working as a waitress and considering going back to school.At her father’s suggestion she decided to ‘give
it 6 more months.’From this emotional
place that sounds a lot like the struggles of trying to ‘make it’ in the sciences -
Stevie wrote the song Landslide which carries words of
wisdom that seem to come from a much older person.Apparently Landslide was written in my home
state of Colorado with the following inspiration:
“I
had been a waitress and a cleaning lady, and I didn’t mind any of this. I was
perfectly delighted to work and support us so that Lindsey could produce and
work and fix our songs and make our music. But I had gotten to a point where it
was like, “I’m not happy. I am tired. But I don’t know if we can do any better
than this. If nobody likes this, then what are we going to do?”
So
during that two months I made a decision to continue. “Landslide” was the
decision. it’s the only time in my life that I’ve lived in the snow. But
looking up at those Rocky Mountains and going, “Okay, we can do it. I’m sure we
can do it.”
Before the 6 months were up the multi-record Brit blues
group Fleetwood Mac heard aBuckingham and
Nicks recording and contacted Lindsay Buckingham to see if he would join the group.Lets be clear on this -they wanted Lindsay NOT STEVIE.Stevie was ‘just the girl’ in a band that she didn’t really interest
Fleetwood Mac at the time.Yes- Lindsay
was (and is) a skilled guitarist but boy is it tough to envision not
getting goosebumps listening to that voice of Miss Nicks!
Lindsay in his defense said he would only consider joining
Fleetwood Mac if Stevie was going to be added as well.Maybe he was being a good band-mate, a
supportive boyfriend, felt owed it to Stevie as she had been working to support
them both while they tried to ‘make it’ or just maybe-just maybe he knew Stevie was going
places and it would be a mistake to miss out on her natural talent –who knows.In any case, the final decision ultimately
came down to the other woman in the picture namely the very talented Christine
McVie who was ‘the girl’ in Fleetwood Mac.If she met Stevie and didn’t get along with her then the deal would
never happen.As luck would have it the two
were fast friends and the rest is well- a legacy of music that never fails to
put me in a good mood or allows me to really feel the way only a good piece of
music can. Take for example the song GYPSY…. I’ve already written about
how the post doc life is that of the academic gypsy…. But let these words
inspire you in the context of whatever it is you try hardest to achieve:
“Back to the gypsy that I was
- And it all comes down to you
Well, you know that it does
Well, lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice
Ah, and it lights up the night
-To the gypsy that remains faces freedom with a little fear”
Now- most people have heard bits of the story in the midst
of their early success with Fleetwood Mac- Stevie and Lindsay broke up- but
always the professional she stuck it out- the band was important. Despite dealing with the end of
a relationship that had spanned nearly a decade - surely a trying time - both Stevie and Lindsay put all that into it’s compartment when they went in to work so that they could get on
with the job at hand- making beautiful music. And that is what they did.
Fleetwood Mac
Stevie wanted to continue writing songs and creating music
but felt she could not contribute as many songs as she would have liked to
each Fleetwood Mac album (which makes sense as there were many prolific members
all excited to have their music included).So what did she do?She made a
very diplomatic decision to produce solo albums AND stay in Fleetwood Mac.How often dear reader does THAT decision pan
out for artists?Usually the band ‘breaks
up’ the artist looses their following or both.I don’t think I can imagine the time commitment and stress this must have taken… Stevie decided in essance to take on TWO music careers.
Perhaps we can get an inkling of what this was like as
seems akin to something many people go through as the do graduate studies or academia in general:
splitting time between research, taking classes, teaching and what bears some
resemblance to a normal ‘life’ outside of one’s career.Stevie’s dedication to her band mates AND (get
this!) herself and her career is inspiring.
Hard at work.
Now there were repercussions and it was not all roses and lace - Stevie dealt with several
addictions: cocaine and painkillers BUT lets go easy on her folks because here
is the cool thing - SHE TALKS ABOUT IT.She
has said in interviews she wants others to learn from her mistakes and to be
able to avoid them.All this leads me to
respect this woman even more. She also
has dealt with strange rumors of witchcraft, media frenzy over a weight gain
and the death of her best friend.Now I
am not sure if others can see where I draw my inspiration from as it relates to
perusing a career in the sciences- but I sure hope you can.I think seeing the human side of someone in
the public eye and knowing their struggles (to some degree) and their very
active decision to push on, work hard and handle struggles with thought, poise and graceputs things in perspective and it doesn’t
hurt that this story comes with an excellent soundtrack.
So- young scientists out there - men and women: learn
from your mentors- ask them of their mistakes and successes be inspired or
warned and proceed with a fire in your gut because you will need that fire on those
days when you’ve had too little sleep and are four days behind on twenty plus
things.
For all you mentors out there-
stay human. That is all we have at the end of the day. It comes down to how hard we try, the
sacrifices we make, those we don’t make, the mistakes we fess to and (here is
the big one): our love/dedication for what we do.
All this I learned from my very own fairy godmother who’s
haunting voice inspires me to stay whimsical even in a tough as nails
profession. She inspires me to stick to it- tackle the task at hand, to take risks and to work damned hard…even if you are ‘just
the girl.'
More from the heart lyrics from the above song Leather and Lace:
"You're saying I'm fragile
I try not to be
I search only
For something
I can't see-I have my own life
And I am stronger
Than you know"
More about Dr. Pert’s excellent book which I highly
recommend.
“From Library Journal
Intrigue at the "Palace": back-stabbing, deceit,
shunning, love affairs. This is not the plot to I, Claudius but the account
Pert gives of her time working at the National Institutes of Health (NIH),
a.k.a. the Palace. Yet her time at NIH is not the central point here. Nor are
the molecules of the title, although they do get due coverage. Pert offers
mainly an account of her journey from a conventional scientist to one who also
embraces complementary and alternative medicine. The journey is long and not
without price. She was passed over for the Lasker and Nobel prizes for her work
on opiate receptors while colleagues were recognized; she believes that her
development of a potential AIDS drug was thwarted owing to scientific dirty
pool as well as her being a woman in a man's world. Along the way, she took
control of her career, her life, and her personal mission. This is an
eye-opening book for anyone who thinks that people with medical degrees act
more civil or are more altruistic than the rest of us, though Pert also shows
that some do rise above the fray. Recommended for academic and special
libraries.?Lee Arnold, Historical Soc. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out
of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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