Events Detail

Speaker:
Edward Hurme, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior

This event is part of an event series „CASCB Seminar Series“.

Join Zoom meeting: https://zoom.us/j/96166531596

Meeting-ID: 961 6653 1596

Edward Hurme is a Postdoc at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, where he investigates the migration and mega-colony dynamics of the straw-colored fruit bat, Eidolon helvum, across sub-Saharan Africa. He completed his PhD at the University of Maryland and he is behavioral ecologist interested in the movement and sociality of organisms in relation to ephemeral resources.

Continental-scale monitoring of Africa’s most gregarious fruit bat

Straw-colored fruit bats (Eidolon helvum), Africa’s most gregarious fruit bat and a key seed disperser, migrate and form large seasonal colonies throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa. While aggregations of straw-colored fruit bats likely match their migration to exploit peaks in fruiting, the mechanisms and route of migration remain unclear. In this talk, I will present analysis of monthly colony counts and preliminary analysis of individual tracking to explore hypotheses for the mechanisms and drivers of migration. Peak colony size timing and preliminary GPS tracking analysis suggest that bats time migrations to take advantage of peak rate of green up. Additionally, a link between rapid changes in colony size and phenological match may also imply a potential collective sensing of the environment, which could be threatened by overall decreasing bat numbers along with ongoing disturbance around large colonies. Future tracking with Icarus and colony monitoring will allow us to test hypotheses for the ontogeny of migration and detect potential conservation threats, such as Allee effect, for this keystone species.