PopSci BatSci: Biologists Use Old Weather Data to Track Bat Signals
Hang Time Bats spend much of their time flying, making them difficult to study. Some have been clocked at 20 mph. Joe McDonald/Corbis The hundreds of millions of bats in the U.S. are in serious trouble, threatened by such hazards as wind turbines and a fungal infection called white-nose syndrome, all while facing the uncertainty of a changing climate. Most bats hide in caves during the day and live in the air at night, making them notoriously difficult to study. But if scientists are going to help them, they need to be able to track them. To that end, biologists Winifred Frick of the University of California at Santa Cruz and Tom Kunz of Boston University have teamed up with some unexpected allies: weather researchers Phillip Chilson, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Oklahoma, and radar scientist Ken Howard of the U.S. National Severe Storms Laboratory. The U.S. National Weather Service's 156...