When bats go viral: negative framings in virological research imperil bat conservation

López‐Baucells, Adrià; Rocha, Ricardo; Fernández‐Llamazares, Álvaro

doi:10.1111/mam.12110

Cited by 75 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Quantifying the ecosystem services provided by synanthropic bats and advocating for their contribution to farmers and residents that share their habitats with bats will most likely improve the reputation of bats (Kunz et al, 2011; López‐Baucells, Rocha, & Fernández‐Llamazares, 2018; O’Bryan et al, 2018; Russo et al, 2018). Efforts to preserve the contribution of bats should also be taken into account.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An appetite for pests: Synanthropic insectivorous bats exploit cotton pest irruptions and consume various deleterious arthropods

et al. 2020

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Conservation biological control (CBC) seeks to minimize the deleterious effects of agricultural pests by enhancing the efficiency of natural enemies. Despite the documented potential of insectivorous bats to consume pests, many synanthropic bat species are still underappreciated as beneficial species. We investigated the diet of Kuhl's pipistrelle (Pipistrellus kuhlii), a common synanthropic insectivorous bat that forages in urban and agricultural areas, to determine whether it may function as a natural enemy in CBC. Faecal samples of P. kuhlii were collected throughout the cotton‐growing season from five roost sites near cotton fields located in a Mediterranean agroecosystem, Israel, and analyzed using DNA metabarcoding. Additionally, data on estimated abundance of major cotton pests were collected. We found that the diet of P. kuhlii significantly varied according to sites and dates and comprised 27 species of agricultural pests that were found in 77.2% of the samples, including pests of key economic concern. The dominant prey was the widespread cotton pest, the pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella, found in 31% of the samples and in all the roosts. Pink bollworm abundance was positively correlated with its occurrence in the bat diet. Furthermore, the bats’ dietary breadth narrowed, while temporal dietary overlap increased, in relation to increasing frequencies of pink bollworms in the diet. This suggests that P. kuhlii exploits pink bollworm irruptions by opportunistic feeding. We suggest that synanthropic bats provide important pest suppression services, may function as CBC agents of cotton pests and potentially contribute to suppress additional deleterious arthropods found in their diet in high frequencies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An appetite for pests: Synanthropic insectivorous bats exploit cotton pest irruptions and consume various deleterious arthropods

et al. 2020

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“…In addition, scientists and journalists can together craft media messages that communicate individual and collective responsibility for people to adopt strategies to coexist with bears and value their ecological role or economic potential (Boan et al, 2018;Freeman & Jarvis, 2013;Jacobson et al, 2018;Lakoff, 2010). Borrowing from behavioral sciences, messages could be crafted using loss aversion techniques, for example, that focus on bear safety without over-dramatizing the nature of a bear or humanbear interactions (Gal & Rucker, 2018;Lopez-Baucells, Rocha, & Fernandez-Llamazares, 2017;Lu, Siemer, Baumer, & Decker, 2018). As Cinner (2018) suggests, loss aversion could improve people's motivation and participation in conservation actions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From human invaders to problem bears: A media content analysis of grizzly bear conservation

Hughes

Foote

Yarmey

et al. 2020

Conservat Sci and Prac

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Across their North American range, grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) occupy a special place in human imagination, as icons of nature's rugged and raw power, to representations of safety risks and economic costs of living with carnivores. Different bear representations can also be found across news media, from controversial and sensational descriptions of attacks, tragic events and conflicts, to scientific accounts of conservation research. News media certainly has the power to pique curiosity, spark debate, or elicit emotional responses through framing and repetition of content. In turn, news stories can influence how people might interpret and internalize information about grizzly bears. Using media content analysis, we examined newsprint stories on grizzly bears across their North American range between 2000 and 2016, to understand message framing and attention cycle, as well as attitudinal expression and representative anecdote conveyed to the readership. We found that human–bear conflict stories are over‐reported compared to other narratives, where a single incidence garners more attention than a story about new scientific findings. We also found articles that included hunting frames largely originated in Alberta, likely due to the threatened species listing and hunting moratorium. Attitudinal expressions included ecological, negative or neutral, and moral sentiments toward bears. The most common representative anecdote conveyed to the readership reflected the dire state faced by grizzly bears. The bear eco‐gossip expressed in the articles we reviewed, which included clear protagonists and antagonists and the occasional man‐bites‐bear surprise, appears to be the diet of manufactured information fed to the public. Results of our study can help scientists and conservationists understand how news media portrays grizzly bears to the public and how this might influence public sentiment toward their conservation, but also identifies the roles that scientists, conservationists and journalists together can play in crafting effective, factual and engaging news stories about bears.

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“…It should be considered, however, that bats provide important ecosystem services (Aizpurua et al., ; Ancillotto et al., ; Boyles, Cryan, McCracken, & Kunz, ; Kunz, Braun de Torrez, Bauer, Lobova, & Fleming, ). Overemphasizing the potential risks posed by bats to humans may generate unjustified alarmism, a fact that has raised considerable concern in conservationists (López‐Baucells, Rocha, & Fernández‐Llamazares, ), as also highlighted by the EUROBATS agreement on the conservation of bat populations in Europe (working group on “Communication, Bat Conservation and Public Health”). Under this perspective, surveillance may still be important to avoid or mitigate potential conflicts and eventually improve bat conservation policies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection and phylogenetic characterization of astroviruses in insectivorous bats from Central‐Southern Italy

Amoroso

Russo

Lanave

et al. 2018

Zoonoses and Public Health

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In recent years, bats have been found to harbour many viruses, raising several questions about their role as reservoirs and potential disseminators of zoonotic viruses. We investigated the presence of six virus families in bats in three regions of Central-Southern Italy. Astroviruses were identified in seven of 13 bat species. Sequence analysis revealed marked genetic heterogeneity among the astroviruses identified, with nucleotide identity ranging between 60.26% and 87.62%. Astrovirus diversity was not associated with the bat species, the geographic areas or the bat colony, suggesting the circulation of several astrovirus strains in Italian ecosystems. Genetic diversification and interspecies transmission appear common in bat astroviruses and could provide, potentially, the bases for transmission to humans and other mammals. Yet overemphasizing this risk might have detrimental consequences for bat conservation and preservation of the important ecosystem services bats provide.

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When bats go viral: negative framings in virological research imperil bat conservation

Cited by 75 publications

References 24 publications

An appetite for pests: Synanthropic insectivorous bats exploit cotton pest irruptions and consume various deleterious arthropods

An appetite for pests: Synanthropic insectivorous bats exploit cotton pest irruptions and consume various deleterious arthropods

From human invaders to problem bears: A media content analysis of grizzly bear conservation

Detection and phylogenetic characterization of astroviruses in insectivorous bats from Central‐Southern Italy

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