Malaysian Bat Education Adventure

Hi Everyone
Well it really rained last night! We had a bit of a storm around 6 pm and thought that was the last of it, but then just as we were going to check the traps it started pouring down again. A total of 20.4 cubic cm! This didn’t do much for the capture rates in the short term. When the traps get wet they become more apparent to the bats’ echolocation systems (because there are water droplets on the fishing line), and on top of that many bats don’t like to fly in the pouring rain. So if we are pretty sure we are going to get rain, we close the traps and take a night off — a low capture rate due to rain creates a bias – meaning we can’t be sure if there weren’t many bats because of the rain, or because there simply weren’t bats at the places where the traps were set. Scientists try to do their best to control factors like that, but rain is never easy to predict! So the trap rate was really down last night, although hopefully in the longer-term the rain will increase the insect availability and push up the capture rates again. The bats really need more food, as many of the females are pregnant and need alot of energy, and even more so when the young are born. When females have pups (baby bats) they have to give over alot of energy to producing milk (called lactation) to feed them. So they like to time giving birth with periods of high food availability.

So last night the traps set were KL0277, KL0279, KL0281, KL0283, KL0285, KL0287, KL0289, KL0291, KL0293, KL0295, KL0297, and KL0461.

Here are the data:

Rhinolophus robinsoni

Selamat pagi (that’s Malay for good morning)!
Well it looks like the rain did help a bit, as catch rates were up a bit last night. The rain on the 23rd was about 7 cubic cm, but it hasn’t rained since. On the 24th we set traps KL0233, KL0235, KL0237, KL0239, KL0241, KL0243, KL0245, KL0247, KL0249, KL0253, KL0274, KL0275. We had another quite rare catch last night — Rhinolophus robinsoni. We’ve caught about 33 individuals across the reserve as a whole, but to my suprise, when I checked the records, this was the first time we have had this species at Kuala Lompat! It looks very like R. stheno – same size and generally “look” with a rounded connecting process, but the ears are a bit more pointed, and the sella (the underside of the connecting process) is an unusual shape, so once you know what to look for it’s quite easy to spot them.

Here are the data:

Hi Everyone
Well the good news is it finally rained for real this afternoon (Feb 23rd). A huge great storm which should hopefully soak in properly and boost the insect activity and hence make our batty friends a bit more active and push up the capture rates.

The bad news is it was raining so hard that our field assistants who move the traps for us each day couldn’t work! So unfortunately, we won’t be batting tonight, so there won’t be data for you tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed that we continue getting some rain, but that it isn’t so heavy that we can’t set the traps to be ready for Tuesday night.

Hi Folks,
We had an interesting couple of captures last night, with two Hipposideros larvatus caught. It’s not a particularly rare bat in Malaysia. In fact it forms pretty large colonies (in the 1000s) in caves, but we don’t actually catch them on the study grid at Kuala Lompat that often. I’m not sure if that’s because they don’t have a cave roost nearby, or if they don’t like to forage in the understory where the traps are. I suspect its more to do with the availability of caves because in the study site in Sumatra, which is right by a cave, we are knee-deep in H. larvatus every night! We got so many of them one night (more than 100) that we had to start bringing them back in pillow cases (25 bats per case) because we ran out of bat bags! That was a very long night. Anyway, as you will see from the data, this is a fairly big species, and if you look closely at the photo on the right you might be able to see that it has several lateral leaflets (usually three), so it’s a pretty distinctive species, and is found all over Southeast Asia and like all the Hipposideros it is insectivorous.

Hipposideros larvatus

Notice the three lateral leaflets on the side of the muzzle

So on to the data. First off, we set traps KL0213, KL0215, KL0217, KL0219, KL0221, KL0223, KL0225, KL0227, KL0227, KL0229, KL0231, KL0269 and KL0255. We had to close trap KL0221 at 9 pm due to ants. It was another dry day with a tiny shower at 4pm giving us just 0.8 cubic cm of rain.

Hi Folks,

Last night’s traps were KL0191, KL0193, KL0195, KL0197, KL0199, KL0201, KL0203, KL0205, KL0207, KL0209, KL0211 and KL0267. We had a tiny shower just as it was getting dark (0.2 cubic cm of rain), but overall it is still very hot and dry, and it was a very quiet night for bats. The problem is that the really dry weather tends to result in fewer insects, and with fewer insects about the bats tend to be less active. So despite all the hard work checking the traps, we only had seven captures.

Today Danny and I have come back up to Kuala Lumpur as he is flying back to Lubbock tonight. His flight leaves just before midnight here (Friday night) but he will arrive in Lubbock by midday on Saturday because of the time difference. He spent last night learning how to use the local spinning tops. He bought one for himself after watching the match on Sunday. It’s much harder than it looks and he was at it for AGES and only managed to get the top to spin properly once. The top is hand carved by an old man from the nearest village.

Back to the data: