If you hear more people talking about bats in Northern Colorado, it’s not just because Halloween is around the corner. The annual North American Symposium on Bat Research is happening in Fort Collins this week, and bat researchers and enthusiasts have a jam-packed schedule to learn about the winged mammals.
“So many years ago, this group of researchers and biologists were just like, ‘Hey, there’s this understudied group of taxa that we really think is great for the environment that do cool things, so let’s lean into that,’” Riley Bernard, conference program director and associate professor in the Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming, said.
No bats will be in attendance. But nearly 400 people are traveling from all over the world to talk about them. Presentations and workshops include how to track them with tags and acoustics, how wind energy affects their migration, and how white nose syndrome and other threats are impacting their existence.
There are more than 1,500 species of bats worldwide, and more are still being found. That means each type can be hard to study. Tanya Dewey, a CSU professor and one of the conference hosts, said having all these researchers in one room is a big boon for the winged mammals…