Associate Professor Paul Armsworth is featured in TN Today with a new paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment called, “Are conservation organizations configured for effective adaptation to global change?”
Veronica Brown (research coordinator, McCracken Lab) is featured on the Bat Conservation International page focusing on Women in Bat Conservation.
The McCracken Lab has a new paper in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases (online first).
Riley F. Bernard, Jeffery T. Foster, Emma V. Willcox, Katy L. Parise, & Gary F. McCracken. 2015. Molecular detections of the causative agent of white-nose syndrome on Rafinesque’s big-eared bats (Corynorhinus rafinesquii) and two species of migratory bats in the Southeastern USA. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 51(2).
A 2015 Carlos C. Campbell Fellowship, from the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association, was awarded to Riley Bernard (McCracken Lab, collaborating with Emma Willcox (FWF)) for the project titled “Further Investigation of the Winter Behavior of Bats at Hibernation Sites in Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Habitat use During the White-Nose Syndrome Epizootic.”
Gary McCracken will be interviewing tomorrow (Wednesday 1/14) on the NPR radio show “On Point with Tom Ashbrook.” This show is a call-in format that airs live from 11 AM – 12 Noon. We’ll be talking about bats, Ebola, and hopefully bat conservation.
Here are directives to the show from NPR: The site for our hour is located at this link: http://wbur.fm/14S6wjq
We’re located on Twitter @OnPointRadio and on Facebook at Facebook.com/OnPointRadio. Our host, Tom Ashbrook, tweets @TomAshbrookNPR. Feel free to direct your friends and followers to the show on any digital platform that works best for you. #OnPointRadio
Congratulations to Gary McCracken, Emma Willcox (FWF) and Riley Bernard! They were recently notified of a $10,000 grant from the UTIA Center for Wildlife Health to do a project titled: “Understanding Lower Pseudogymnoascus destructans Loads and Susceptibility to White-nose Syndrome in Gray Bats.”
EEB Researcher Veronica Brown, from the McCracken Lab, appeared on the WATE Evening News shortly before 5pm on Wednesday September 10, to provide expert information about bats. A bat interrupted the WATE Good Morning Tennessee broadcast around 6am that morning; the incident made national news (e.g. New York Daily News)!
Thank you, Veronica, for helping set the record straight about bats!
Riley Bernard, a PhD student in the McCracken Lab, just received notification of $5,000 in funding from Basically Bats Wildlife Conservation Society. The funding is for her project “Epidemiology of Pseudogymnoascus destructans: Changes in Fungal Load on Active Bats throughout Winter in the Southeast.”
Gary McCracken took 3 graduate students (Amanda Janicki, Riley Bernard, and Melqui Gamba Rios) to the International Bat Research Conference in Costa Rica in August. It was the largest bat meeting ever, with over 600 participants from 55 countries. Below is a photo of the group wearing leaf-noses (which tropical bats have – see the link for a news article about the conference and tropical bats).
http://www.seabcru.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ibrc_2013_abstracts.pdf
Aguiguan, a small island in the Northern Mariana Islands, is home to the only known population of the Emballonura semicaudata rotensis, a subspecies of Pacific sheath-tailed bat. Immediate research is necessary to determine an appropriate approach to its conservation. Two ubiquitous invaders, feral goats and lantana shrub have dense populations on Aguiguan. It is unknown whether these invasive species affect the Pacific sheath-tailed bat.
The grants were funded by Sigma Xi and Bat Conservation International. Jess was also inducted into Sigma Xi as an associate member.
PhD student Jennifer Krauel (a Gary McCracken student) was recently funded by Bat Conservation International for her project, “Identifying insect communities fueling bat migration in an agriculturally important area”. Her project involves high throughput sequencing of bat guano to identify their food sources.