Invasive Threats To Bats
Biological invasion is a major driver of biodiversity loss across the globe, but no study has described the scope of invasion impacts on bats, the second largest mammal clade. The first chapter of my dissertation summarizes the negative effects of invasive species on bats according to four broad categories: predation, pathogens, competition, and complex effects.
Nearly 50% of threatened bats are island endemics and 22% occur on single islands. The Pacific sheath-tailed bat (Emballonura semicaudata rotensis) is an endangered insectivore present only on Aguiguan Island, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. My second dissertation chapter informs conservation management of this bat by describing the indirect impacts of invasive Lantana camara and feral goats. For more information on this research, please check out my blog for the 2015 Sigma Xi Student Research Showcase. |
Bat Research Effort & Extinction Risk
Of the approximately 1,150 recognized bat species, nearly 15% are designated “threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), signifying that they are at a high risk of extinction. An additional 17% are designated “data deficient,” denoting that a threat category has not been assigned due to insufficient knowledge on the abundance and/or distribution of the species. Moreover, 55% of bat species have unknown population trends, compared to 8% of the 10,000 species of bird.
My third dissertation chapter describes the state of academic literature for most of the bat clade, and reports publication intensity according broad research topics. I also prioritize bat species for research effort according to vulnerability and irreplaceability. For my fourth dissertation chapter, I provide quantitative estimates of extinction risk for 59 species that have not been assigned a threat category on the Red List using a well-resolved phylogenetic tree and bat trait data. |
Publications
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Conference Presentations
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