Echoes in the dark: Technological encounters with bats

Habitat use and movements of Glossophaga soricina and Lonchophylla dekeyseri (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae) in a Neotropical savannah

“…Three pairs of researchers who were in radio contact with each other tracked the bats. At RER, where only G. soricina was tracked, two of the tracking teams were stationed at the tops of two existing 8-and 12-m towers, while the third team was instructed to move around to improve signal reception (WHITE & GARROTT 1990, MASON & HOPE 2014. At Sal Fenda, where only L. dekeyseri was tracked, two 6-m aluminum pole structures were constructed to hold one antenna each, and the third was mobile (WHITE & GARROTT 1990, MASON & HOPE 2014.…”

“…A bat was considered stationary when three consecutive bearing measurements indicated the same position for an individual. Data on the frequencies, date, time, and direction of the strongest signal intensities were taken as positional bearings using a compass and were recorded for each bat (WHITE & GARROTT 1990, MASON & HOPE 2014.…”

“…A movement corresponded to the distance that was covered between two points as measured by triangulation of the bearings (WHITE & GARROTT 1990, MASON & HOPE 2014. It was therefore possible to obtain the pattern of dispersion for each bat at the end of a tracking session.…”

Methodologies for animals’ geographies: cultures, communication and genomics

“…But they have largely been dependent upon the goodwill, expertise and field sites of scientists and other animal experts. Whilst this dependence may lead to interdisciplinary, collaborative and even symbiotic practices of knowledge production, 8 such approaches are constrained by their reliance on these gatekeepers, their modes of engagement and their styles of subsequent communication. Furthermore, the bias towards ethnographic methodologies involving participant observation of humans in their interactions with nonhumans; interviews with human subjects about their experiences with nonhumans; discourse analysis of human representations and mobilizations of nonhumans; and the like -leads to the retention of a bias towards human sensings of nonhumans.…”

Making a difference: Forest biodiversity, affective capacities, and the micro-politics of expert fieldwork

“…In particular, we draw on affect theory, which offers an analytic perspective on such experiences. Affective bodily capacities and responding to non-human ways of being can be viewed as a precondition for knowing nature, as exemplified by numerous ethnographies of nature surveyors (Lorimer, 2008;Nygren and Jokinen, 2013;Mason and Hope, 2014).…”