Meeting Abstract

P1.27  Saturday, Jan. 4 15:30  Bats and Caves in Three Dimensions: Advanced Methods for the Study of Bat Roost Biology HRISTOV, NI*; ALLEN, LC; Center for Design Innovation; Winston-Salem State University nickolay.hristov@centerfordesigninnovation.org

Organisms do not exist in isolation; rather, they are immersed in and constantly interact with their surroundings. Understanding the physical properties of the environment is thus important because such data provide useful understanding of the complexity of the natural world and the spatial arrangement of organisms in it. In studying cave roosting bats, much effort to date has been dedicated to recording cave conditions, colony size or physiological responses of the bats to infer roost suitability. Currently, there is little understanding of how these and other variables may be affected by the morphology of the caves. Existing survey techniques are tedious, slow and can pose a disturbance risk to bats or require extensive expertise in surveying that might not scale well to biological measures of interest. New methods, therefore, are needed for the effective collection, analysis and visualization of such data. Long-range laser scanning provides a promising solution to the challenges of traditional cave surveying by capturing the three-dimensional environment in stunning accuracy using non-contact measurements. The goal of this work is to reconstruct in detail the six largest natural roosts of Brazilian free-tailed bats in south-central US. Here we present preliminary results from three of the six sites. The data to date include the largest cave by size, largest colony and smallest cave and colony sizes. The preliminary analysis indicates that there is no relationship between the basic morphometric properties of the caves and the size of the bat colonies. These findings suggest that other variables such as proximity to food or other cave properties or conditions likely determine the size of the resident colonies.