May 2024 Our preprint on magnetic inclination sensitivity in migratory pipistrelles caught some attention.
Apr 2024 We got the cover of the March issue in the The European Physics Journal Special Topics!
Mar 2023 Our Spotlight on ResearchGate
Nov 2022 We are in Riga!
July 2022 We are delighted to start our 2022 Latvian-German Butterfly Project This bilateral exchange of ideas with opportunities both to work in the field and host seminars while doing lab visits in the two countries was granted by the Baltisch-Deutsches Hochschulkontor. Find more details here in Deutsch or Latviešu valoda.
Jan 2022 I joined the International Society for Neuroethology. Why? Because Neuroethology defined as the study of the neural basis of natural behaviours is among the most fascinating disciplines of the century.
June 2021 OPEN PHD POSITION We are looking for a highly-motivated student who is open to multidisciplinary research in order to elucidate question in wild bat navigation and sensory biology. Feel free to share the link or apply.
Jan 2019 Accepted manuscript about orientation of migratory pipistrelles. Question was whether or not bats make navigational decisions already before taking off for flight. // photo credit: C. Giese
2018-08-25 Our paper Migratory bats are attracted by red light but not by warm-white light: Implications for the protection of nocturnal migrants is out in Ecology & Evolution.
Bats are sensitive to longer wave lengths of visible light. Our findings show orientation towards red LED light and call for caution in the application of red aviation lighting, particularly at wind turbines, as this light color might attract bats.
// photo credit: C. Giese
July
2018 Accepted manuscript about artificial light at night and how it affects migratory bat behaviour. More
info soon to come.
June 2018 Congratulations to Alise Elksne for successfully defending her Bachelor thesis about pipistrelle bat behaviour at Riga University! update Mar 2019: Paper published at Journal of Zoology, here.
2018-05-17 Our paper Conservation Strategies for Bats Flying at High Altitudes is out in BioScience.
Aerial fragmentation, collisions and sensory pollution are some examples of threats bats face when flying in the troposphere, and which we synthesise here to provide recommendations for potential protective measures.
May 2018 Accepted manuscript about oxidative stress bats experience on migration. We asked if a day of rest, such as on stopover, would help bats reduce the imbalance of reactive oxygen species after transit flights.
March 2018 Accepted manuscript about conservation of high-altitude flying bats. It includes topics like sensory pollution and the consequences for bat orientation which arise from that.
February 2018 Master's student Lea Gajewski joins Batlab at IZW. She will accompany me for studies on bat magnetic alignment.
2018-01-25 UK Bat Conservation Trust highlights recaptures from bats we ringed in Pape in their 2017 report.
2018-01-12 @ the German Bat Research Meeting where I had the opportunity to give a talk about the magnetic sense of bats. In addition, we presented a poster on eaves-dropping by bats during migratory transit flights.
January 2018 'Bat true navigation'
launched on ResearchGate. It's a project page where I will upload output from our work. It also provides a list with links to the most relevant literature in the field, and you can
ask questions or give comments on the topic. Feel free to have a look or even join the list of followers!
August 2017
Our Thai-bat ecoimmunology paper is out!
It suggests that bats exhibit circadian rhythms in immune cell counts.
2016-04-18 It is mid-April, the RIN16, an international conference on "Orientation & Navigation of Birds, Humans & Other
Animals" is over. Unfortunately! It was a fantastic meeting with a lot of insight into the
most recent research around the topic.
Together with another 100 participiants, I very much enjoyed the event being held at the Royal Holloway College, Univ. of London UK.
February 2016
Currently, three projects including extensive banding of bats focus on migratory species in Europe.
· Our collaboration
between the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW, www.batlab.de) in Berlin and the Latvia University of Agriculture explores the regional origin and overwintering grounds of bats
migrating along the Latvian Baltic Sea coast. In August and September 2014 and 2015, another 4,000 bats were caught and banded (ca. 90 % of which were Nathusius’ bats) and recaptures have
already been made.
In Germany volunteers and both bat marking centres initiated a pilot project in 2015 called “Monitoring Fledermauszug in Deutschland” (German monitoring of bat migration). In this nationwide citizen science project some 4,000 Nathusius‘ bats have been ringed so far.
In Britain, a "Nathusius' Pipistrelle Survey" was conducted between 2009 and 2014, and 300 individuals were banded. One of these bats was found later in the Netherlands. Together with a recapture from Latvia the connection of populations of the British Isles and mainland Europe has been proven here for the first time.
PS: In case you are interested in any detailed information feel free to contact me or have a look at my British colleagues' webpage http://www.mammal.org.uk/60for60_weekly_blogs/nathusius-pipistrelles
2015-12-20 December until March 2016 - it is hibernating season for the bats and time of data analysis
for me.