Blog Posts

It was a busy field season capturing bats in southern, central, and northern Illinois! We set out a total of 57 nets and caught a total of 96 bats with the most diversity being caught in southern Illinois. We caught seven different species of bats this year! We caught 42 […]

2024 Mist Netting Recap

12 March 2025 in Mist Netting by Brittany R

This September Champaign-Urbana hosted the first annual Central Illinois Bat Festival! Over 800 bat enthusiasts and bat-curious members of the community gathered at Anita Purves Nature Center and Crystal Lake Park to celebrate and learn about our furry skyward neighbors. The festival featured a little bit of something for everyone. […]

Getting a Little Batty in Central Illinois

22 October 2024 in Blog Posts / Outreach / People tagged outreach by Jordyn Chace

This past weekend, Brittany and I were invited to join a winter hibernacula (winter bat roost) survey with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources alongside partners from multiple institutions across the country, all with the same goal – bat conservation. The purpose of these surveys is to get a count […]

A Weekend Underground with the Bats

8 March 2024 in Blog Posts / Winter Surveys tagged hibernacula / Indiana bat / mine by Ricky Gieser

It’s love day and everyone is included, even (especially), our sweet friends the bats! As a bat researcher and conservation biologist, it is easy for me to fall in love with these funky flying mammals, and it probably is for you too (if you are reading this blog in the […]

The Love Bat

13 February 2024 in Behavior / Blog Posts by Jordyn Chace

We’ve had another exciting field season at IBCP! This year we focused our mist netting efforts in central and northern Illinois. We set out a total of 94 nets this year across four different sites and caught 62 bats! Our most exciting catch of the year was a Hoary bat! […]

2023 Mist Netting Recap

19 December 2023 in Blog Posts / Mist Netting by Brittany R

All bats in Illinois are obligate insectivores, meaning they only eat insects. Bigger bats eat harder insects like beetles, smaller bats eat smaller species like flies, but almost all of them LOVE moths1,2. There’s a wide range of sizes in moths, from the tiny micromoths with millimeters-wide wingspans to the […]

Echolocation Jamming Moths

3 April 2023 in Night-Flying Insect Surveys by Ricky Gieser

It’s been a very busy summer here at IBCP! I want to thank our hard working field crews for a successful field season including: Abby Pagels, Ricky Gieser, Caroline Abramowitz, Jocelyn Karsk, Jordyn Chace, and IDNR staff. This year, we added 10 new grid cells (GRTS) to our acoustic surveys. […]

2022 Field Season Recap

23 September 2022 in Uncategorized by Brittany R

Last month, Sarah and I had the opportunity to assist the Illinois Department of Natural Resources with a hibernaculum survey. Hibernacula surveys are performed with the goal of counting how many bats reside in the cave/mine, identifying species, and locating where they are within the cave/mine. We were both very […]

The Great Bat Count

22 April 2022 in Uncategorized by Brittany R

There is a common romanticism and nostalgia for classic biological fieldwork—it’s easy to conjure images of Jane Goodall in hiking boots and binoculars patiently crouching in the tall grass waiting for a glimpse into the private lives of wild animals. After a year cooped up inside, I feel called to […]

From Binoculars to Beakers: A genetic approach to surveying biodiversity

1 March 2021 in Blog Posts / Environmental DNA by JordynC

This year we had to be creative when it came to making outreach for IBCP fully virtual. One of the busiest times for outreach is during Bat Week and this year it was from October 24-31. We came up with new ways to celebrate still making Bat Week fun and […]

Bat Week At A Distance

18 November 2020 in Uncategorized by Brittany R