Welcome to the 2010 MBEA!
A special welcome to all the students at North Ridge Elementary (TX), Halifax Elementary (MA) and Unity Elementary (WI) who will be joining the Texas Tech research team on the 2010 Malaysian Bat Education Adventure!
The ancient rainforests of Peninsular Malaysia are a true treasure house of global bat diversity. They are home to over 10% of the world’s bat fauna and more than 70 species can occur in a single forest, ranging from the tiny three gram woolly bats to the large naked bat weighing in at nearly 200 grams. Intact forests are literally teaming with bats, but as the forests are degraded and fragmented, this diversity is threatened.
Over the next few weeks you will be tracking our research as we describe the incredible diversity of insectivorous bats in Krau Wildlife Reserve, Malaysia. We plan to be in Malaysia by the end of April, and trapping will begin May 2nd 2010.
Each day we will be reporting back to you through this website. You need to check the Field Journal to find out how things have gone on the night before and to find the data you will need to track what is happening with your bat species.
To learn more about your bat and all the other bat species we encounter, go to the Meet The Bats page and find your species. There is information and video about each species so hopefully you will get to know them well!
Once a week we hope to be in contact with at least one class with a video-conference directly from the field. That will give us a chance to update you personally on how things are going, to show you some of the bats, and to answer any questions you have about the bats or the research (so be ready with cool questions!!).
There’s lots of other information for you on the site; you can learn more about bats, and how we study them, what the rainforest, and Malaysia are like, and you can even get to know the research team a bit better, so have fun exploring!
