Blog Posts

Fall is an important time of year for bats as their reproduction cycle begins! As temperatures begin to cool between August and October, bats swarm in the air; circling closely with each other in large groups, often near hibernacula sites. As they swarm, they assess potential partners, mate, and survey […]

Bat Reproduction

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This field season has certainly been a strange one! COVID-19 postponed our field work a few months later than when we would normally start. For the safety of our crew, we decided to postpone mist netting until 2021. We were able to successfully complete our 20 acoustic GRTS (NaBat survey […]

Field Season 2020 Recap and Updates

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Last week we sent out letters to landowners with the results of our 2018 acoustic surveys. It is a lot of work to put these together, but we want to make sure that our volunteer landowners know that we appreciate their participation in this program! If you do not receive […]

Ready for the 2019 field season!

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Small reddish brown bat being held.
The beginning of September marked the end of the field season for the Illinois Bat Conservation Program (IBCP) as we finished work at our final, northern-most field site.  As fall begins, Illinois bat species begin to prepare for winter migration and/or hibernation and their activity patterns, habitat use, and presence […]

End of Season Update

 in Acoustic Monitoring / Blog Posts / Emergence Counts / Environmental DNA / Mist Netting / Radio Tracking / Roost Evaluations by
The Illinois Bat Conservation Program is officially back into the field season! We started getting out and collecting data in May but we haven’t had a chance to get the blog updated. Our graduate student Ash, and her assistants Brooke and Abby, have been working hard catching bats across the […]

2017 Field Season Kickoff!

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Over the past month, tens of thousands of bats have migrated back to their summer ranges in Illinois.   As spring temperatures increase and insect prey emerges, habitat in Illinois becomes more favorable for bats. At least six species of Illinois bats are known to migrate. Because cave-roosting bats have ready […]

Bat migration and mortality

 in Blog Posts / Migration by
Bats are a model organism when talking about themes surrounding this year’s Earth Day—conservation and advocacy for science in general. Why? Because bats are universal. On every continent (except Antarctica) bats make up 1,300 of the world’s mammalian species, which is a huge chunk of the earth’s biodiversity. On every […]

Bats, Earth Day, and Science Advocacy

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Congratulations to Illinois Bat Conservation Program graduate student (at Eastern Illinois University), Ashleigh Cable, who has won the Plummer/HWC Research Award, which will help pay for materials needed for her thesis research. The award was established by the family of Norm and Maria Plummer, founders of HWC Laboratories, to provide […]

Ashleigh receives Plummer/HWC Research Award

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We are so proud of Tara, who, late in 2016 deposited her thesis and completed her MS degree through Eastern Illinois University, advised by Jill Deppe.  Tara continues as our Bat Survey & Monitoring Coordinator through the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is […]

Tara completes graduate thesis on bat biology

 in People by
On cold days like today, the bats of Illinois have to use special strategies to survive. While some bat species migrate to warmer habitats for the winter, many bats regularly hibernate in Illinois, and use this period of inactivity to survive the winter. At least six species regularly hibernate in […]

Bat Hibernation in Illinois

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