Networking Networks for Global Bat Conservation

Kingston, Tigga; Aguirre, Luís F.; Armstrong, Kyle N.; Mies, Rob; Racey, Paul A.; Rodríguez‐Herrera, Bernal; Waldien, Dave

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-25220-9_17

Cited by 14 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Training people and building more academic capacity is fundamental to accelerating research that identifies targets for conservation. To meet these needs, at least 10 regional bat conservation networks have arisen in recent years, allowing rapid knowledge development and sharing, research capacity building, consensus approaches to priority setting, and coordination of conservation effort and advocacy . We endorse Kingston et al .…”

Section: Challenges and Next Steps For Global Bat Conservationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To meet these needs, at least 10 regional bat conservation networks have arisen in recent years, allowing rapid knowledge development and sharing, research capacity building, consensus approaches to priority setting, and coordination of conservation effort and advocacy . We endorse Kingston et al . and advocate for a global network for bat conservation that unifies and connects existing regional networks to share knowledge, build capacity, prioritize and coordinate research effort, and provide a voice for advocacy that can ensure sustainable bat populations worldwide.…”

Section: Challenges and Next Steps For Global Bat Conservationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A review of the major threats and challenges to global bat conservation

Frick

Kingston

Flanders

2019

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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391

335

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Bats are an ecologically and taxonomically diverse group accounting for roughly a fifth of mammalian diversity worldwide. Many of the threats bats face (e.g., habitat loss, bushmeat hunting, and climate change) reflect the conservation challenges of our era. However, compared to other mammals and birds, we know significantly less about the population status of most bat species, which makes prioritizing and planning conservation actions challenging. Over a third of bat species assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are considered threatened or data deficient, and well over half of the species have unknown or decreasing population trends. That equals 988 species, or 80% of bats assessed by IUCN, needing conservation or research attention. Delivering conservation to bat species will require sustained efforts to assess population status and trends and address data deficiencies. Successful bat conservation must integrate research and conservation to identify stressors and their solutions and to test the efficacy of actions to stabilize or increase populations. Global and regional networks that connect researchers, conservation practitioners, and local stakeholders to share knowledge, build capacity, and prioritize and coordinate research and conservation efforts, are vital to ensuring sustainable bat populations worldwide.

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Section: Challenges and Next Steps For Global Bat Conservationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Challenges and Next Steps For Global Bat Conservationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A review of the major threats and challenges to global bat conservation

Frick

Kingston

Flanders

2019

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Self Cite

391

335

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Section: Integrating Bat Ecology and Conservation With Virus Survementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In response to shared conservation issues that threaten bat populations, bat research has expanded from predominantly short-term, independent projects to sustained collaborative networks that provide training in skills that strengthen bat conservation efforts, from taxonomy to ecology and educational outreach to policy formulation [21]. Numerous regional networks of bat research experts have been established around the world [4,21] (Figure 1). There are a number of advantages that coordinated, regional bat research initiatives have over country-specific efforts, specifically the ability to take effective action on shared threats spanning geographical, temporal, and disciplinary scales [21].…”

Section: Integrating Bat Ecology and Conservation With Virus Survementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bat research networks have increased in number, largely as collaborative efforts to combat regional threats that traverse country boundaries [21]. Yet a number of geographic regions lack coordinated bat research networks, most notably Western Asia [4], a region of 20 countries extending from Turkey in the west, Georgia in the north, Yemen in the south, and Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bat Research Networks and Viral Surveillance: Gaps and Opportunities in Western Asia

Phelps

Hamel

Al-Hmoud

et al. 2019

Viruses

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Bat research networks and viral surveillance are assumed to be at odds due to seemingly conflicting research priorities. Yet human threats that contribute to declines in bat populations globally also lead to increased transmission and spread of bat-associated viruses, which may pose a threat to global health and food security. In this review, we discuss the importance of and opportunities for multidisciplinary collaborations between bat research networks and infectious disease experts to tackle shared threats that jeopardize bat conservation as well as human and animal health. Moreover, we assess research effort on bats and bat-associated viruses globally, and demonstrate that Western Asia has limited published research and represents a gap for coordinated bat research. The lack of bat research in Western Asia severely limits our capacity to identify and mitigate region-specific threats to bat populations and detect interactions between bats and incidental hosts that promote virus spillover. We detail a regional initiative to establish the first bat research network in Western Asia (i.e., the Western Asia Bat Research Network, WAB-Net), with the aim of integrating ecological research on bats with virus surveillance to find “win-win” solutions that promote bat conservation and safeguard public and animal health across the region.

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A macroecological perspective on strategic bat conservation in the U.S. National Park Service

et al. 2016

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Abstract.North American bat populations face unprecedented threats from disease and rapid environmental change, requiring a commensurate strategic conservation response. Protected-area networks have tremendous potential to support coordinated resource protection, disease surveillance, and population monitoring that could become a cornerstone of 21st-century bat conservation. To motivate this idea, we develop a macroecological perspective about bat diversity and associated conservation challenges and opportunities on U.S. National Park Service (NPS) lands. We compared occurrence records from parks against published range maps. Only 55 (19%) of parks reported as present ≥90% of the bat species expected based on range maps, highlighting the information-gap challenge. Discrepancies suggest substantial under-reporting and under-sampling of bats on NPS lands; inadequate range maps and habitat specificity are implicated for some species. Despite these discrepancies, 50 species, including several range-restricted and endangered taxa, were reported in at least one park unit, including those in the Caribbean and tropical Pacific. Species richness increased with park area at a rate (z) of ~0.1, a pattern confounded by covariation with latitude, elevation, and habitat. When accounting for these factors, richness decreased predictably at higher latitudes and increased at mid-elevations and with greater numbers of keystone underground habitat structures (caves and mines), reflecting a strong species-energy relationship. The inclusion of covariates that represented percentage of natural vs. human-modified (converted) landscapes and elevation range-a proxy for environmental heterogeneity-was uninformative. White-nose syndrome (WNS) presents a tremendous challenge to the NPS: All 12 species currently known to be affected by the disease or to host the causal fungus are represented in the NPS system. One hundred and twenty-seven NPS parks are in counties currently or likely to become WNS-positive by 2026. All parks are expected to experience increasing temperatures in coming decades; forecasted climate change velocity is particularly high (>1 SD) for 50 parks. Seventeen parks are in the vicinity of high (>1 SD) wind turbine density. Based on these biogeographic patterns, we suggest ways to prioritize NPS parks for additional inventories, monitoring, and resource protection. Our results demonstrate how macroecology and bioinformatics together can guide strategic conservation capacity-building among protected areas.

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Networking Networks for Global Bat Conservation

Cited by 14 publications

References 51 publications

A review of the major threats and challenges to global bat conservation

A review of the major threats and challenges to global bat conservation

Bat Research Networks and Viral Surveillance: Gaps and Opportunities in Western Asia

A macroecological perspective on strategic bat conservation in the U.S. National Park Service

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