Halloween is long past, but Shannon Farrell, a professor of environmental and forest biology at SUNY-ESF, still has bats on her mind.
Farrell and her students at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry are researching the movement and roosting patterns of bats in eastern North America, even as a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome has recently devastated bat populations in the region.
Farrell’s objective is to understand the ways bats are impacted by white-nose syndrome, and her findings could improve efforts to protect remaining populations, according to her website. Farrell has been collecting data on the roosting habits of bats in Cape Cod and her team has found more bats than originally expected in unusual places.
“We see (the bats) using human structures in areas where many seemingly otherwise suitable trees are available for roosting,” Farrell said in an email. “Perhaps avoiding crowds (of bats) helps them reduce the probability of exposure to the pathogen being transmitted from other bats.”
Farrell and her students said bats play important roles in many ecosystems and can even impact humans.
Read more at The Daily Orange
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