Bat-friendly Reservations
Thumbless bat (Furipterus horrens) in Costa Rica. Credit: Heather York (All rights reserved).
Our main objective is to develop a management strategy for a thumbless bat colony roosting under hotel structures, using information on ecological and environmental patterns in conjunction with hotel reservation history. We plan to use acoustic monitoring, visual counts and environmental data to create a bat-friendly model that proctects the colony and support tourist reservations.
Update
Acoustic monitoring and visual count surveys have been carried out to gather information about colony size and spatial patterns.
Acoustic monitoring has been key to scale up our temporal sampling scale. Even though passive acoustic monitoring has been challenging (mainly due to their high call frequency and microphone sensitivity limitations), active bat detectors have provided useful recordings to customize new species detectors. These recordings are among the few that are available for this species.
Spectrogram showing Thumbless bat calls (Furipterus horrens) recorded with active bat detectors
Site: Chilamate, Sarapiqui. Costa Rica
(10°27’1.91″N, 84° 4’10.19″W; 117 masl)
Project description
Thumbless bat (Furipterus horrens) in flight, Costa Rica. Credit: Heather York (All rights reserved).
Bats are found in many types of habitats, including places where human activities are interconnected with bat roosts. This project deals with an important socio-ecological interaction, weighing bat colony stability on one side and commercial purposes on the other; as bats are roosting under hotel bungalows available for tourist visitors.
These human-made structures have an important colony of Thumbless bats, Furipterus horrens, which stands out because it is considered a rare an elusive species. For example, in Costa Rica, it was not observed for more than 40 years, until the discovery of this particular colony in 2017, since then it is considered of high conservation concern.
However, over the years, this colony has experienced negative effects due to the impact of reservations and visitors’ activity in these structures.
The information acquired on this project will inform a bat-friendly reservation program; a pionering effort aimed at protecting the colony while still generating income, through a data-driven approach.
Project Information
Current status: Active.
Start Date: 31/07/2024
Area of Knowledge: Exact and Natural sciences.
Research Theme: Sustainable Use of Biodiversity