ABSTRACTS North American Symposium on Bat Research 40th Annual Meeting Denver, Colorado 27 to 30 October, 2010 40th Annual Symposium of the North American Society for Bat Research Presentations at the 40th Annual Meeting of the North American Society for Bat Research, Denver, Colorado 27-30 October 2010. Abstracts for platform and poster presentations are listed alphabetically by first author’s last name. Spatio-temporal Variation in Bat Activity in Ontario and How Sampling Method Impacts its Depiction Amanda M. Adams. University of Western Ontario, London, ON Effective management and conservation strategies for biological communities require a thorough understanding of structure and function. The structure of a community, the number of species, and the distribution of those individuals can vary dramatically both temporally and spatially. When attempting to characterize the structure of a community it is important to consider the advantages and limitations of various sampling techniques. When and how to sample is a question that is typically decided by time availability, manpower, and equipment limitations, with the majority of bat surveys occurring during the initial peak in activity (within 3 hours of sunset). The degree of temporal variability will determine if sampling in the beginning of the night is adequate and, if so, for which species. My research addresses how much sampling and what techniques are most effective for representing bat activity levels in a temperate location and to what extent different practice can give different representation of the same community. The Evolution of Flight in Bats: Ontogeny and TAIL Locomotion Reveal New Insights Rick A. Adams. University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO Current scenarios outlining the evolution of flight in bats have little-to-no empirical support. Using ontogeny of flight as a surrogate for evolutionary patterns, I employed high-speed videography to investigate functional dynamics of flight development to parse out potential transitional stages from a nonvolant to volant mammal. The recent discovery of extensive and complex use of the uropatagium during flight (Tail-Assisted- Inertial-Lift, or TAFT) in vespertilionid bat and its relationship to body mass (R2 = 0.33, R = 0.58, P < 0.05), along with morphological adaptations indicating an ancient evolution of this flight mode, compel a new consideration of flight ancestry for bats. Integrating data on ontogeny, morphology, and performance with mechanics and kinematics of TAIL locomotion and associated adaptations, I put forth a new interpretation and a unique hypothesis concerning the origin of flight in mammals. “Being a Bat’s Friend” and Walt Disney: Love at First Ultrasound Paolo Agnelli, Giacomo Maltagliati, Laura Ducci, Marco Riccucci, and Stefano Cannicci. Museum of Natural History, Section of Zoology La Specola, University of Florence, Italy; Gruppo Italiano Ricerca Chirotteri (GIRC), Department of Evolutionistic Biology Leo Pardi, University of Florence, Florence, Italy. The goals of the project initiated in 2006 by the Natural History Museum of Florence “BAT BOX – Un pipistrello per amico” (Being a Bat’s Friend), are to raise the appreciation of bats in Italy and to encourage everybody to provide roosting habitat through the use of bat boxes. Thanks to Coop, a large Italian retail outlet, it has been possible to create a good model for a bat box and to distribute it throughout Italy. In the past four years, about 25,000 artificial wooden roosts for bats have been released and sold at cost both to private citizens and public entities. In 2010, Disney Italy joined the project; they changed the layout in order to give children and adults a greater opportunity to learn more about bats. Disney has created the comic “Paperino e il pipistrello Kiro” (Donald Duck and Kiro the bat) to enhance a positive image of bats such as agents of biological control through mosquito predation. Many people were (and are) happy to cooperate. The monitoring data has confirmed a growing success of colonization depending on the length of time since bat box installation: the bat boxes placed in 2007 are occupied 18.7% in the first year, 31.9% in the second, and up to 40.0% at the end of the third (2009). A similar trend is recorded for the artificial roosts positioned in 2008. The permanence time is therefore one of the main elements influencing the colonization. The height above the ground and the hours of sun that the artificial roost receives during the day are positively correlated to bat box occupancy. The lack of homogeneity of the collected data has unfortunately limited the potential practical usefulness of the connected analysis. In 2011 a new and better model of wooden bat boxes and another experimental model made with inert material and recycled plastic are planned as well, in addition to new comics adventures about Kiro. 2 Denver, Colorado 27 – 30 October 2010 Summer Thermal Regulation of Desert Kuhl’s Bat Pipistrellus kuhlii Abdulaziz Alagaili. King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Most studies of thermal regulation have examined bats responses to summer heat in regions where temperature fairly exceed 40 Cº, but not to extreme heat as in deserts. As seasonal climate fluctuation poses a challenge to bats in central Saudi Arabia, Kuhl’s bat, Pipistrellus kuhlii was studied for daytime body temperature fluctuations including the phenomenon of torpor. Temperature-sensitive transmitters were attached to nine bats over a seven-day period in late July. At dawn, Kuhl's bats entered a state of torpor in a manner similar to temperate bats as body temperature reduced from a normothermic level (~37°C) to a resting temperature of 26 to 31°C (air temp. 28°C, roost temp. 24°C). However, increases in air temperatures as morning progressed led to increases in roost temperature, thus body temperatures of bats rose reaching 32 to 35°C by noon. At 15:00, body temperatures of bats reached the normothermic level and surpassed it to a range from 35 to 42°C (air temp. 43.5°C, roost temp. 37°C), thus forcing them to emerge from roosts before dusk when it was still daylight and immediately sought water. Acoustic Sampling: A Comparison of Detectors and Automated Software C. Ryan Allen, Shannon Romeling, and Lynn Robbins. Missouri State University, Springfield, MO Acoustic detectors have been used for monitoring flight activity of bats since Griffin discovered echolocation in 1940. Recently, significant progress has been made in the areas of portability, weather resistance, and the collection and storage of large data sets over extended periods of time. This progress includes the continued development of new and potentially more accurate means of collecting the information contained within each call sequence, as well as more accurate and repeatable ways to identify the species making these calls. The two main categories of detectors used to collect these data are zero-crossing analysis and full spectrum detectors. This study included three commonly used detectors; Anabat (Titley Electronics, Inc.), AR-125 (Binary Acoustic Technology), and SM2 (Wildlife Acoustics). Side by side comparisons were conducted for 43 nights during 2010 throughout Missouri. Data collected were used to compare average memory consumption, total files collected, total bat passes, quality of the call sequences, and reported call parameters. In addition, two automated call identification software packages were used for comparison; BCID (Bat Call Identification, Inc.) and Sonobat 3 NE (Sonobat). Call files recorded at the same time and location were initially identified by three experienced investigators and then run through the automated software systems. Furthermore, full spectrum calls from the SM2 recorder were converted into zero-crossing call files allowing the systems to analyze the same files. Accuracy rates, species composition, and processing times were measured for each block of files. The results of this study are of growing importance with the recent explosion in bat research due to large scale wind farms and white-nose syndrome. Paraphyly and speciation within bulldog bats (Chiroptera: Noctilionidae) Faisal A. Anwarali Khan, C. Miguel Pinto, and Robert J. Baker. Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX; Department of Mammalogy, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY Assessing species’ boundaries or phylogroups using multifaceted approaches from independent genetic markers would be an appropriate method to identify independent evolutionary units. Under this framework, intrageneric relationship and species limits within Bulldog bats, genus Noctilio with an emphasis on Noctilio albiventris were explored using 4 datasets: cytochrome-b (cyt-b), cytochrome c oxidase-I (COI), Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphisms (AFLPs), and morphology. We genetically analyzed 51 samples of Noctilio from two currently recognized species: N. albiventris and N. leporinus. In cyt-b and COI gene phylogenetic analyses, N. albiventris form a paraphyletic clade, containing the gigantic species N. leporinus. Moreover, 5 monophyletic clades were documented, 4 associated with N. albiventris with > 5% genetic distance and a single clade for N. leporinus. Clades within N. albiventris are morphologically indistinguishable but they mostly have different geographic distributions, matching with all the recognized subspecies in N. albiventris: N. a. minor, N. a. affinis, N. a. albiventris, and N. a. cabrerai. Although we recovered all the clades from