Women In Science Series
Protecting The Diversity Of Flying Mammals

Flying Mammals: A Bat Habit to Follow

By Rick Gregory

The more you learn about bats, the more you admire them.

Unfortunately, like a quirky student, these flying mammals are maligned and labelled with nasty names, like blood-suckers or flying rats, before anyone gets to really know them.

Even for Dr. Tigga Kingston, a wildlife researcher, the conversion to study bats came by accident.

She started out wanting to be a zoo vet, but soon realized that to answer questions beyond curing sick animals required investigation.

Fascinated by the tropical rainforest, she took off for the jungles of Africa and Central America after high school and worked on biodiversity expeditions for a few years.

“I went to Colombia in my first year as an undergraduate to study small mammal fauna,” recalls Tigga. “But our traps got stuck at Customs, so we borrowed the mist nets from the birders and started working on bats. After that I never looked back.”

Today, Tigga Kingston spends her time in Southeast Asia studying the diversity of bats in the Old World. She is co-founder of the Malaysia Bat Conservation Research Unit (MBCRU) to promote the conservation of bat fauna in Malaysia. It is a joint effort among local and foreign scientists, including officers from the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, to conduct research activities, develop skills and resources of managers and educate the public on the diversity and biology of bats.

Sometimes the quest for knowledge puts people in strange circumstances. Wildlife researchers are a particularly peculiar brand of scientists. They strive to find answers wherever the questions may lead them. It is important to enjoy fieldwork and be excited by the academic questions you are asking she suggests.

Research involves lots of tedious components and may be physically demanding, so to get through the low points requires plenty of intellectual inspiration and ability to tough out any research challenges. “Get as much experience as you can in your chosen field and be prepared to volunteer,” advises Tigga. “This will help you determine if you really do want an academic career.”

In all my outings to the jungle with wildlife researchers, I’ve noticed one common ingredient among them: passion, inexhaustible reservoirs of excitement and wonder. It is the one element that cannot be taught in the classroom; it must be discovered and refuelled in the field.

“I focus on insect bat species and the role that echolocation plays in their lives,” says Tigga. “It fascinates me that these mammals - that are so like us in many ways – rely totally on sound to perceive the world about them.

The academic jungle is just as tough as the real one. According to Kingston, woman researchers may find the lack of female mentors in male-dominated institutions disillusioning. Although women tend to outnumber men in the biological sciences at the undergraduate level, men are the overwhelming majority of tenured faculty.

And women pursuing academic careers may find that the biological clock ticks during the final push for tenure, causing them to face difficult reproductive decisions and endure hectic lifestyles.

Hard work usually triumphs over the hardships. The study being done by Dr. Kingston and her colleagues in Peninsular Malaysia is “probably the biggest standardized study of any tropical vertebrate community in the world.”

As a unique endeavour, the project hopes to gain insights into how complex communities of bats – up to 50 species - are able to coexist in the same forest area.

These findings will help natural resource managers on how to protect the extraordinary diversity of bats in Malaysia as man-made changes occur to the environment.

For the wildlife researcher, time spent in the field is priceless. For the rest of us, their dogged determination translates into increased knowledge about the natural world. Their small contributions add up to expand our understanding of the interactions of man and nature, and the consequences of our actions or inactions.

“I greatly enjoy working with bats, either to build up long term data to understand bat communities, or by conducting new surveys in areas where the bat fauna has not been described,” says Tigga. “I also enjoy introducing students from around the world to this kind of research and field techniques, and take great pleasure in their subsequent achievements."

"It’s a real thrill when someone who was at best ambiguous about bats sees the light and becomes another bat advocate.”

For more details on Malaysia's flying mammals and protection efforts, visit the Southeast Asian Bat Conservation Research Unit for free information packets.

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