Speaker: Dr. Ela-Sita Carpenter, Urban Wildlife Biologist at USFWS
In North America, bats are a taxon of concern and play an important role in insect control. Bats’ response to urbanization varies. In recent work, Dr. Carpenter aimed to determine whether evaluating environmental and socioeconomic variables in an urban landscape can help identify which bat species are present and how active these species are.
Ela-Sita’s research occurred in Baltimore, Maryland, a ‘shrinking’ city in the eastern US, which had no prior research on bats. For the main segment of her dissertation, she used passive acoustic monitoring to record bat activity at 32 vacant lots within Baltimore. Environmental and socioeconomic data were obtained using on-site measures, GIS, and US Census data.
Dr. Carpenter will share her results and management implications.