Posts Tagged: Bats
Bats save walnut growers money on pest control
California farmers produce most of the nation's walnuts, about 500,000 tons of walnuts on 290,000 acres, with an annual crop value of $1.8 billion.
Long, who works on field crops and pest control in Yolo, Sacramento and Solano counties, noted there are 250,000 bats living under the Yolo Causeway alone that could be employed for pest control.
When asked how she knows that the nocturnal animals are eating the damaging pests, Long explained that she examines the guano to identify the insects they've eaten. "Bats have very shiny poop," she said, because their fecal matter is full of insect exoskeletons.
Long, who has studied the design elements of bat houses, brought a sample of a bat house to the studio. She said the box should be placed in an area that gets afternoon shade and at least 10 feet off the ground to protect the bats from cats and dogs.
Long also talked about the Black Rock Desert trilogy, a series of educational children's books about the adventures of a boy and a pallid bat that she has authored.
For more information about Long's bat project, see her blog post Bats in the belfry? No, bats in walnut orchards.
Long will be discussing her bat research with the Capital Science Communicators group tonight at G Street Wunderbar in Davis. She will bring specimens of common bat species for people to see and touch. The talk is part of UC Davis' Science Café series and is a free event that's open to the public.
Rachael Long shows a bat and bat box.
Bats in the belfry? No, bats in walnut orchards
What's the economic value of bats to the agricultural pest control? It probably exceeds $23 billion per year, according to recent studies. However, very little data exists on the benefits of bats for individual crops, such as walnuts.
UC Agriculture and Natural Resources researchers, together with UC Davis, are launching a survey to better understand the value of bats (and birds) on managed lands. The voluntary survey, focused on growers and landowners in California's Central Valley, may be completed online.
Work is already underway to assess the pest-control impact of bats on walnut production in the Central Valley with a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency STAR (Science to Achieve Results).
California produces almost all of the nation's walnuts. Farmers grow some 500,000 tons of walnuts on 290,000 acres, with the annual crop valued at $1.8 billion. Due to popular demand, new orchards are planted every year, calling for more intensive farming practices to manage costly crop pests. For walnuts, the key pest is the codling moth, a larva that feeds on developing nuts. The adult moths begin to fly and lay eggs on the nutlets in May and produce up to four generations per year.
Bats forage in walnut orchards for codling moths and other insects. Colonies of bats double their activity on farms when they roost in bat houses attached to barns in the orchards. The Mexican free-tailed bat is the most abundant species, followed by the Yuma and California myotis, and five other species, including the pallid bat.
In an effort to quantify the economic impact of bats' consumption of codling moths, we captured 36 Mexican free-tailed bats over a three-night period in an 80-acre walnut orchard in Yolo County. Some 3,000 bats live in the bat houses in an abandoned shop on the property.
The research procedure: We opened our mist net from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. to correspond with codling moth flights and bat activity, and captured the bats as they returned to the roost after feeding. We placed the bats individually in sterile cloth sacks and kept them there until they defecated, then we released them. We quickly froze the guano pellets and shipped them to a USDA lab, where scientists genetically tested them for the presence of codling moths.
Our preliminary data suggest that 5 percent of these bats – about 150 bats from this colony of 3,000 – consumed at least one codling moth per night. We calculated 30 nights per generation for the codling moth, and four generations per year, with each female moth laying 60 viable eggs on individual nuts.
The next steps: we are refining our economic data and determining whether these insect-hunting bats help reduce pesticide use in walnut orchards.
Bats provide these pest control services for free while farmers enjoy a decrease of pests in their orchards and an increase in profits.
Co-authors: Rachael Long, UC ANR advisor; and Katherine Ingram, Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, UC Davis.
To bee or not to bee depends on the crop
About 35 percent of the food we eat depends on the assistance of bees to pollinate plants and trees so they will produce fruit, nuts or vegetables. It takes 1.6 million colonies of honey bees to pollinate California's 800,000 acres of almond trees.
Our food choices would be dramatically reduced if bees weren't around to pollinate. To illustrate what the produce section of a grocery store would look like in a world without bees, Whole Foods Market removed the products that depend on pollination from one of its stores and took a photo. See the difference: http://ucanr.tumblr.com/post/84164840510/kqedscience-whole-foods-shows-customers-the. Without bees, more than half the fruits and vegetables were eliminated.
Honey bees and other pollinators are being threatened by the drought, disease, mites, loss of habitat and food sources, according to Eric Mussen, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology at UC Davis and bee expert.
Beth Grafton-Cardwell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside and director of Lindcove Research and Extension Center, talks about the role of pollinators in California agriculture in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8suOt5PnzWc&feature=youtu.be.
To see photos of different kinds of pollinators and to learn more about how to help them thrive, visit our pollinator page. On May 8, help count the pollinators in your community and add them to the map at http://beascientist.ucanr.edu.
College students create wildlife habitats in a Wild Campus program
Working with campus experts (such as faculty and staff in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology) and local environmental and conservation organizations, the volunteer students are improving the habitats for local wildlife and engaging the public in hands-on activities.
This is an extraordinary program that gives the students real-world environmental management skills, along with leadership opportunities and communications experience. Professor John Eadie, Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology at UC Davis, said of the Wild Campus program, “Hands-on activity is a huge part of the educational experience.”
A past project — Build a Wild Home Day — involved working with the UC Davis Arboretum on a successful public outreach program to build bird and bat boxes for installation on campus. (Great photos of this program are on the group’s Facebook page.)
The Wild Campus organization has a large cadre of eager and dedicated students who are improvising and making the most of limited resources. However, they are in need of donated field equipment (used equipment is fine) and financial contributions.
Visit the Wild Campus website and Facebook page for a feel-good look at what these ambitious students are doing to improve the environment, along with ways you can help them succeed.
Exciting story book for children introduces the benefits of bats
Written by Rachael Long, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Yolo County, the story chronicles the adventures of 9-year-old Jack, who is exploring Nevada’s Black Rock Range when he falls into a cave. Jack befriends a bat named Pinta and a coyote pup named Sonny, who are determined to help him find his way home.
The story of Jack was first told to Long’s now 16-year-old son. When he was young, Long would make up stories to tell him during their long daily commute from their home on a farm outside of town.
“Each day, the stories got more and more elaborate,” Long said, “and I incorporated my long-time interest in bats.”
Long’s father, a UC Berkeley biology professor, introduced her to the world of bats. She was an early member of Bat Conservation International and she took a field class through the organization in 1992.
“The more I learned about bats, the more interesting I found them,” Long said.
As a field crops and pest management expert for UCCE, Long has worked to boost Californians’ appreciation for bats’ importance in pest control. The state is home to 25 species of bats, seven of which are commonly found in the Central Valley. Bats can consume their body weight or more in insects each night, with a colony of 500 bats eating a grocery bag full of insects from nightfall to dawn. The loss of bats in North America could lead to agricultural losses of more than $3.7 billion per year, according to an analysis published in the journal Science in April 2011. Long has researched bats’ role in reducing Sacramento Valley crop pests.
“We know that bats in the Sacramento Valley feed on insects such as moths, beetles and plant bugs that are often agricultural pests,” wrote Long when the results of her study were published in the January-February 1998 issue of California Agriculture journal. “Potentially, they may help reduce insect infestations in crops by feeding on these pests.”
Long also published a study of bats’ use of constructed bat boxes in the April-June 2006 California Agriculture journal. By evaluating the 186 bat houses in rural areas of California's Central Valley, Long learned that the flying mammals prefer houses mounted on structures such as buildings, those that are shaded or exposed only to morning sun, and within one-quarter mile of water.
Long is an author of the UC publication Songbird, Bat and Owl Boxes, which outlines methods for integrating nest boxes with farm management, provides details on construction and maintenance of nesting boxes, and information on other sources of reliable bat information. The publication includes plans for building a wildlife nesting house.
Naturally, Long sought to share what she knows about bat’s role in the environment with young readers in her fictional but scientifically sound children’s stories.
At the beginning of the book, when Jack falls into the cave, Pinta, the bat, is alarmed. “But as she flew around the cave, her keen ability to echolocate to find her way in the dark, gave her a different picture than she expected. Oh no, a boy, not a monster!” At first, Jack lies on the cave floor knocked out by his injuries. Long writes, “(Pinta) hovered above him, wings stretched more than a foot, beating rapidly but barely making a sound.”
Such tidbits about bats are sprinkled throughout the story. Young readers will be so absorbed in Jack’s journey home, the fate of an escaped jailbird and the search for gold, they won’t realize they are learning about natural science.
Tate Publishing quotes New York Times science journalist Jim Robbins as saying in a review of Gold Fever, “Bats play a little known, but vital role in the world. This book introduces young readers to their world in an engaging and entertaining way.”
Gold Fever is the first in the three-book "Black Rock Desert Adventure Series." Proceeds from the trilogy will go to fund bat conservation programs.