A team from Northeastern State University has been conducting bat surveys at Wildlife Management Areas within 100 miles of their Tahlequah campus to learn more about the region’s bat community. At each of their nine study areas, surveyors spend two to three nights attempting to capture flying bats in a series of mesh nets and recording the echolocation calls of any bats flying around the site. 

“So far, we’ve documented at least six species of bat,” said Elizabeth Burba, principal investigator for the study. “And we’ve documented range expansions for two species, the Seminole bat and gray bat.”  

With the goal of loosely recreating a 1990s-era survey of public lands in eastern Oklahoma, Burba is focusing her team’s efforts on the state’s northeast region while a second team from the University of Oklahoma is revisiting survey sites in the southeast. Together, they hope to compare the present-day survey results to those of the original study and assess changes in species abundance and distribution in the three decades between.   

“This is our second full year of bat surveys,” Burba said. “Since most of the original survey sites were in southeastern Oklahoma, we’re getting to collect a lot of baseline data on new areas in the northeast.” 

For every bat captured, Burba’s team collects a variety of data – from the species of bat caught, its mass, age, and forearm length, to the height of the net in which it was captured, and if there are any visible signs of wing scarring from the fungal disease known as White-nose Syndrome. A small metal band is also clipped to the wing of target species to learn about recapture rates and population sizes. As a side project, the team is photographing bat wings to see if they can identify individuals by the unique collagen bands in the wing, or “wingerprint.” 

“Conservation decisions are often hampered by a lack of data,” Burba said. “It’s great to be able to collect and provide data about Oklahoma’s bats. And it’s fun to see students get excited about opportunities they may have never knew existed.”

This survey is funded by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through State Wildlife Grant F23AF02848 with matching resources provided by Northeastern State University.