Bat Lab
The Bat Ecology and Genetics Laboratory promotes research on and conservation of bats in northern Arizona and globally, has over a dozen projects underway currently, and involves a vibrant network of researchers and collaborators. The ecology side of the team is directed by NAU's Carol Chambers, and I direct the genetics side. Dan Sanchez and our star undergrads have been key members of our genetics team since BEGL's inception in 2014.
See our website: nau.edu/batdna
In recent years, the same tools we use to study bats have been extended to other taxa; you'll see this across web pages.
BEGL News:
July 2021: Faith Walker receives an Arizona Dept of Health Services ABRC grant for rabies research! This grant will be using feces for rabies surveillance.
June 2021: Emma Federman is our new undergraduate researcher. Welcome to the team, Emma!
May 2021: Jordyn Upton receives the Keim Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research, which rewards student dedication and leadership to the pursuit of future research.
April 2021: Jacque Lyman receives NAU's President's Prize, the highest honor an undergraduate at NAU can receive. Further, Jacque is also awarded an outstanding research award at NAU's Undergraduate Symposium for her lizard project.
March 2021: Jordyn Upton and Jacque Lyman are to receive one of NAU's most celebrated undergraduate awards, the Gold Axe Award.
February 2021: Dan Sanchez receives the AZTWS Roger Hungerford Student Award for significant contributions to the management and conservation of Arizona’s wildlife.
January 2021: Colin Sobek, Jordyn Upton, and Faith Walker have three papers published in the Wombat Special Issue of Australian Mammalogy.
February 2020: Samantha Hershauer won best student poster at The Wildlife Society's Joint Annual Meeting
June 2019: Dan Sanchez heads to Norway for the iBOL conference
May 2019: Faith Walker received this year’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentorship
March 2019: Carol Chambers is the new Vice President of The Wildlife Society!
February 2019: Undergraduate researchers Samantha Hershauer and Jacque Lyman presented talks at The Wildlife Society JAM in Albuquerque, NM.
January 2019: The Ancient DNA Lab has moved to Bilby Research Center! We now work in positive pressure rooms to help prevent contamination of sensitive samples, and have one room for bone grinding and another for DNA extractions.
September 2018: Congratulations to Jordyn Upton for winning the poster competition at the wombat conference in Adelaide, South Australia.
September 2018 : Colin Sobek and Jordyn Upton fly to Australia for a wombat meeting and research.
August 2018: Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Jordyn Upton for her research exchange (RCN g2p2pop) with a South Australian research team.
July 2018: Bon voyage to undergraduate researcher Austin Dikeman, who heads to Paris for her internship at the Curie Institute as part of her year abroad.
June 2018: We're off to Zambia for our NAU Study Abroad to study wildlife issues and to support the local community via the Maxwell-Lutz Community Impact Award. We'll also deploy Species from Feces Mobile, our field sequencing kit that fits in a backpack. Stay tuned for photos on Flickr.
April 2018: Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Austin Dikeman for receiving a national Goldwater Scholarship, the NAU Award of Excellence in Undergraduate Inquiry & Creativity, 3rd place at NAU UGRADS, and a NAU Paul A. Sciame Scholarship!
April 2018: Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Samantha Hershauer for receiving a HURA, NASA USRP internship, and a Jerry O Wolf Scholarship!
Jordyn Upton, our Intern-2-Scholar, is genotyping southern hairy-nosed wombats from hairs!
Jan 2018: Congratulations to Daniel Sanchez for a 2018-2019 ARCS Scholarship!
September 2017: We have two new undergraduate researchers! Samantha Hershauer has joined the Ancient DNA Core, and Jacqueline Lyman will be barcoding plant species for the jumping mouse diet project. Welcome to the team, Samantha and Jacque!
In June 2017, we hosted Rodrigo Medellin, the Bat Man of Mexico, to show him spotted bats. Click our Flickr link below for photos.
Research Specialist Daniel Sanchez is awarded an NSF Graduate Fellowship to pursue his PhD with our team. Congratulations, Dan
February 2017: Undergraduate Researcher Austin Dikeman received student award from the AZ-NM Wildlife Society. Congratulations, Austin!
Ancient DNA Newsflash: We have successfully sequenced a gene of an 8,500 year old bison.
April 2017: Faith Walker and Research Specialist Colin Sobek are off to Australia to re-visit genetic sampling of the southern hairy-nosed wombat, from non-invasively collected hairs.
Summer 2016
Species from Feces manuscript accepted by PLOS ONE
Faith chairs Conservation Genetics session at the International Bat Research Conference in Durban, South Africa
Spring 2016
Our Ancient DNA Lab opens in Forestry
Austin Dikeman joins our team as an Undergraduate Genetics Researcher - Welcome Austin!
Fall 2015
Colin Sobek and Dan Sanchez, pictured here with Paul Hebert, present at the International Barcode of Life Conference in Guelph, Canada!
Species From Feces is featured in The Wildlife Professional! TWS Fall 2015.pdf
Spring 2015
Our Species from Feces database search tool is now live, just in time for the North American Joint Bat Working Group meeting in Saint Louis.
Meet Diego de la Montaña, our guano detection dog. He has illustrated his feculent prowess with our local bats.
Bat background
Bats are arguably the least understood mammalian order, despite being one of the most diverse and abundant. Because bats are volant and nocturnal, and many travel great distances nightly or annually, they have until recently been largely scientifically intractable. Genetic and genomic techniques are now part of an emerging arsenal for unravelling the secrets of bats and facilitating their conservation. We aim to leverage these approaches to benefit bat species globally.
Bats are important for many reasons, including the ecological services they provide in the form of insect control (saving U.S. agriculture an estimated $5.7 billion dollars annually), pollination, and seed dispersal.
In the U.S., an emerging disease (White-nose Syndrome, WNS) and new technologies (wind energy) are bringing a new urgency to the study and conservation of bats. Arizona has the 2nd richest bat assemblage (28 spp) in the U.S. (after Texas), is currently WNS-free, and has a growing wind industry. We are well positioned in Flagstaff to study bats because of diverse bat-focused collaborations here (Bat Conservation International, USDA APHIS, Western Bat Working Group), our proximity to natural disturbances (fire) and relevant industry (wind, mining), and our state-of-the-art facilities (PMI, and the Ancient DNA Lab).
Some of our current projects
Species from Feces Initiative: Tools for genetically identifying bats
Bat guano contains an untapped reservoir of information – DNA. Often available even when bats are not present, guano is stationary and easy to collect. We used bioinformatics to generate a DNA mini-barcode that identifies bat species from their feces. We successfully identified primers that PCR-amplify a 202 base pair segment of mitochondrial gene Cytochrome c oxidase I that we have found to be highly discriminatory among Chiroptera globally, usually down to the species level, readily accomodate fecal DNA, and can be scaled up to next generation sequencing technologies. Our tool has enormous application in the U.S., where bats are under threat from white-nose syndrome, and also worldwide, where many bat species are vulnerable or facing extinction. The paper describing this work is here.
Try our database search to see if your favorite bat can be identified to the species level with our DNA mini-barcode!
Diseases: sylvatics and zoonotics
Simultaneous genetic screening for bat species and White-nose Syndrome
WNS has been confirmed as far west as Washington state and Texas. The disease represents a great risk to public lands in the U.S., especially in the west where bats inhabit relatively pristine cave systems that are important for long term persistence of species. As caves and mines (i.e., subterranean habitat) are refuge for both bat and fungus, a practical conservation tool is to sample guano to genetically determine bat species that use roosts and whether the fungus responsible for the disease is present.
For another project in collaboration with Dr. Slava Fofanov, also at NAU, we are using guano to examine microbial transmission dynamics in time and space.
Rabies in an Urban Interface
Flagstaff, Arizona, has experienced periodic bat-variant rabies virus outbreaks in skunks, foxes, and bats for the past ~15 years. With the USDA APHIS, we are evaluating the seasonal changes in population density of two species of bats (Eptesicus fuscus and Myotis occultus), estimating the amount of active infection by RABV in these species through the year, and determining whether E. fuscus maternity roosts are composed of related females (fondly called our Rabies and Babies project).
Genetics of a spectacular North American bat
Spotted bats (Euderma maculatum) are arguably the most attractive bat species in North America, with long ears and three white spots on otherwise black pelage. Yet they're cryptic (nocturnal, volant, and roost solitarily), and thus their biology remains largely undescribed. Only 35 specimens were known to science before the mid-1960s. Hence, they are excellent candidates for elucidation of aspects of population biology and natural history via genetic tools. We sought to determine the degree of historical and contemporary regional movement. To this end we developed 17 microsatellite markers and are employing them in tandem with mitochondrial markers to genotype 60 museum specimens, 70 DNA samples that we've collected, and 7 mummies dated to 10,000 years old. Expect 3 papers describing our results this year.
Mines and Windfarms
Mines: The number of mines that now exist in the western U.S. exceeds 600,000 and these structures have created new or increased extent of habitat for bats. Mines can provide stable roosts, prey sources, and drinking water for bats and use of mines by bats can be high. Currently, mines are likely to be gated if they provide habitat for bats. With support of BCI and the BLM, Master's student Abby Tobin identified characteristics of gates that are detrimental or positive to bat activity.
Windfarms: Four factors in northern Arizona create the potential for serious impacts to bat populations if risks are not carefully identified prior to construction of wind facilities: 1) the amazing diversity of bats in the area (≥20 species), 2) the unique types and numbers of roost sites found in canyon areas such as the >300 km long Grand Canyon, 3) the moderate climate that allows year-round occupation and activity for some bat species, and, 4) the use of northern Arizona as flyways for migratory species. Ph. D. student Clarissa Starbuck is conducting a risk analysis of wind facility development to bats in northern Arizona by identifying areas of high risk via acoustic, capture, and radio telemetry techniques. She is identifying migration patterns and routes, characterizing the bat community, and locating key roost sites, which will allow resource managers to identify options to protect habitat for bats in proximity to wind development sites.
Bat media coverage:
NAU News, 2019. New research from NAU team expands the answers we can get from bat guano
NAU News, 26 October 2017: Hanging with bats: NAU professors share their research and love of this small flying mammal.
PLOS Research News, Author Spotlight, 2016: Species from Feces: A new tool for identifying bat species.
California Academy of Sciences News, 2016: From Feces to Species.
NRDC's onEarth, 2016: Head's up, Endangered Species: Scientists are spying on you.
NAU News, 2016: NAU researchers make their mark with new DNA testing tool.
KNAU Arizona Public Radio, 2016: NAU lab develops tool to identify bats from guano.
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources News Release, 2016: First new bat species discovered in Minnesota in more than a century.
The Wildlife Professional magazine of The Wildlife Society, Fall 2015: Guano provides genetic material to identify bat species.
KNAU Earthnotes, 2015, All the poop on rarely seen animals.
NAU News, 2014, Unique guano innovation gives straight poop on species populations.
NAU-TV 2014: http://www.nau-tv.com/Play/1656/
NAU-TV Bat Special (4 segments)
KNAU Brain Food, 2014: Species from Feces.