Today I spent the majority of my work day out in the field (about an hour south of Vicksburg, outside of
Port Gibson - the town that was
"too beautiful to burn"), capturing bats. Last Thursday, our bat sampling occurred at night (as is usual with most bat work), but today we used a different tactic...
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| A tall mist net secured to trucks and the Jetta in front of a small roost of evening bats (Nycticeius humeralis) under the flashing of the corner of that building. You can see my boss, Rick, taking a bat out of the net, for a height comparison. Most of my experience with mist netting is with birds, for which I've only used regular height nets. Most bat sampling I have assisted with has been done the same way, by netting cave entrances or over streams. The only time I'd used a tall net prior to tonight was on a mammalogy overnight field trip when we netted high across a road. |
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| Bats in bags, awaiting processing (we had to wait for them to deposit a guano sample, to pair with the tiny wing tissue sample we would be taking). Bats used to be stored in cloth bags, but due to the ever increasing spread of White-nose Syndrome and the resulting strict decontamination protocols that now accompany bat sampling, brown lunch sacks it is! |
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| Quickly processing a bat: visually ID the species/gender/age, take a 2.5mm sterile biopsy punch of each wing, let the bat go, collect guano droppings from the bag and cutting board, sterilize the table and cutting board (and set it aside to dry), then start all over (with new gloves, new cutting board, new biopsy punch, new collection tubes) for the next bat |
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| Eric taking a bat out of the net |
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| A method of bat capture I hadn't seen done before... hand-netting under bridges! |
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| Just look at that smile - field work is fun! It doesn't matter if it's 90 degrees and humid, and there are chiggers and mosquitoes all over you - you aren't stuck behind the computer! |
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| Processing a big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus). Rick was a little nervous handling these guys... they have the largest set of chompers of any local bats, and with the new regulations prohibiting leather gloves (a new set of disposable gloves must be used for each bat processed, and leather gloves are not financially feasible, even on government funds), that thin layer of latex doesn't offer much protection. Don't worry, we're all rabies vaccinated with yearly titers! |
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| Processing bats on the side of the bridge so we didn't have to decon the work truck (since we left the folding table back at the office - oops). |
This sampling is part of our team's ESTCP study titled "Multifaceted High-throughput DNA Barcoding for Addressing Critical Data Gaps for At-Risk Bats." Basically, we are comparing the quality and quantity of genetic data that we can get from pooled guano samples in a mass sequencing run to single tissue samples processed via traditional sequencing runs. After a series of test experiments this year and next, we'll move on to the demonstration phase. The planned outcome is a simple way for land managers to collect genetic samples (scooping guano from beneath roosts, thereby eliminating the need for capturing bats or conducting population censuses) and quickly receive a plethora of information about the population(s) inhabiting their lands (including species, gender, diet, population size, and overall population health - by testing for the presence of parasites and White-nose Syndrome). Genetic lab analyses are not inexpensive, but when compared to the time (and thus salary) that land managers spend monitoring their threatened, endangered, and at-risk species, we think our method will win. Fingers crossed.
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