Just Some Bats Smiling for the Camera

In case you thought bats weren't cute....

Bats are just like kids - if you give them a snack, they'll like you more

All the better to hear you with, my dear!

Fieldwork! Finally!

I am enthused to report that fieldwork has actually happened – woo! Despite bureaucratic setbacks, full moons, rain, roadblocks, a transportation worker strike, and an entire day spent crying like a baby, I made it to three sites (don’t ask me how many I had planned – I set my expectations irrationally high, haha).

My first site, Carmen Pampa, was a great learning experience. My two excellent field assistants, Oswaldo and Adalid, provided countless laughs and tremendous patience with my inexperience, despite our 5:00am quitting time on night one. The entertainment continued when Amy and I decided to keep lists of fieldwork hygiene fails and pop songs re-written with batty lyrics.

Our line-up for night one - 25 bats sampled! Special thanks to my mom, my aunties Dyanne and Kathy, my cousin Maria, and my hairdresser Emily for sewing, like, 500 bags! They were well-loved!  

Working hard, learning some bat ID tips from Oswaldo

 Site two, the Santa Cruz Botanic Gardens, brought a series of ups and downs. We caught a handsome Noctilio albiventris, met a peccary named Anita, and had a chance to work with one of the most knowledgeable bat biologists in Santa Cruz, Aidee Vargas.

Here's the handsome man! 

Aidee taught me lots of new tricks, and she got to take PREDICT samples (blood, saliva, etc.) for the first time. I also committed the dumbest offense ever and left my mist nets at home on day two, losing the most important bat-catching hours of the night. Hopefully that mistake is out of my system now! 

After Jardin Botanico, I lost Amy to Machu Picchu (I guess I can’t hold that against her…) but continued on to San Matias with Aidee and a new assistant named Yerko. San Matias is just outside of the Bolivian Pantanal wetland, along the Brazilian border. A high crime rate didn’t blemish the town for me at all though, because the bats were brilliant!

Hey - I went to Brazil for a sec!

In three days, we caught 12 species, three of which belong to the rarest bat families in Bolivia. We also caught my favorite guy so far – a tiny Rhynchonycteris naso, with beautiful coloration on his arms and the calmest demeanor of any bat so far. We caught him early in the evening as he was flying above the water. So, not only was he the cuddliest, but I got to swim to him, a delightful reprieve from the hellish heat of the region.

Retrieving the cutie from the mist net

Sweetest bat ever!

I am still holding on hopes for a fourth site, but with everything set except an important signature, it’s not looking good. Today I’ll have an answer…

On Being a Bumbling Bat Biologist

Well, the last few days have been quite the adventure!

Amy and I have been running, bussing, hiking, backpacking, taxiing, and motorcycling around Bolivia meeting tons of amazing bat biologists and talking to community members around my field sites. I have the best field assistant-friend ever!

Amy and me in Cochabamba, happy after meeting Luis Aguirre, one of the most influential bat biologists in Bolivia.

I received my Bolivian collection permits a few days ago, so we’re planning to begin fieldwork next week in the La Paz department. Our task for the last two days was to talk with Padre Emilio at the Carmen Pampa agricultural university, outside of Coroico. I have sites in both Carmen Pampa and Coroico, so it was important to get his approval.

The diverse tropical forests surrounding Coroico are called Yungas, meaning 'warm earth' or 'warm Andes' in the native Andean languages of Quechua and Aymara. They represent a transitional zone between the colder mountain peaks and the Amazonian forests that lay east of the mountains. The best part is, bats love them!

Padre Emilio wasn’t around on Friday, so we searched for bats around our hostel’s property and ended up watching a bunch of them hunt for insects above the pool.  A ridiculously beautiful Andean rainstorm shut down our night at a less than ideal place to sleep, and an 8:00 am meeting with Padre Emilio meant an early morning.

After taking the half-hour trip to Carmen Pampa, a quick survey of the people on campus* informed us that we were, indeed, on the wrong campus. Luckily, the right campus was only about two miles away. Unluckily, it was straight up a monstrous, muddy mountain… and the taxi left us at the bottom while we were asking around for Padre Emilio.

At this point, it was about 7:55, and we began the hike up. Do to my efforts at traveling light, my footwear for this trek was flip-flops (Amy, the much wiser, was wearing hiking boots). After a few failed, and slightly embarrassing, attempts at flagging down micros (public transport vans) heading from the lower campus to the upper campus, a kind soul happened to drive by on a dirt bike.

My feelings at this point can only be described as desperation. I was 15 minutes late for a critical meeting, hadn’t eaten breakfast, and was covered in mud. The biker offered a ride, and I hopped on to find Padre Emilio. Amy, bless her heart, finished the walk.

Turns out, Padre Emilio is awesome! He started the meeting with: “Ok, you tell me what you want to do, and I will tell you yes”. We get to start fieldwork on Wednesday, and he may even come into the field with us to learn about bats!

Covered in mud, hungry, exhausted, but laughing, we returned to the hostel in want of breakfast and a shower. Upon discovering a shower filled with mold, huge spiders, and a fist-sized cockroach, we packed up, laughing harder, and hiked down the hill to town. 

After an intense couple of weeks, views like this remind me that there's nothing else I would rather being doing than exactly what I'm doing now. 

Overall, while this particular excursion has had its ups and downs, I really can’t do anything but look back and chuckle. Despite the stress of starting fieldwork from zero in a foreign country where communication is far from ideal, it appears that, with many more bumbling mishaps, things will work out.

Please keep your fingers crossed for us!

*Often times, when people here don’t know the answer to your questions, they make something up. It is considered ruder to say you don’t know than to give an incorrect answer. Thus, the strategy is to survey a crowd when you have a question. The most common answer, so far, has usually been the best option.

Back in Bolivia

Por fin, at last, I am back in Bolivia! This time I’m here to study bat-pathogen diversity for my Ph.D. dissertation. There’s no pressure at all… not.

I arrived less than a week ago to La Paz, and I am blown away by its beauty. The town sits way up high in the Andes*, and looking around you can see mountains for miles. I am staying with a friend and colleague Erika, and the view from her living room gives a perfect glimpse of La Muela del Diablo – The Devil’s Molar – an “extinct volcanic plug”, according to Lonely Planet Bolivia.

We take public transit everywhere, the most exciting of which is El Teleferico; they actually have a gondola as public transportation! So, I can get where I need to go while also having a birds eye view of one of the prettiest places I’ve ever been. It’s amazing.

El Teleferico

A view of La Paz from El Teleferico

So far, my work has been focused on two things: obtaining collection permits and planning logistics for field site travel.

Permit collection, besides the typical signed piece of paper from the federal government, includes travel to each town or village where I’m planning to work and asking permission from a town representative who, as a voice of the people, will (hopefully!) let me collect bats on the land. This is tough because 1) some sites are multi-day trips and 2) I call myself “survivally fluent” in Spanish, meaning, I can keep myself alive, but not much else. Talking with well-respected members of small communities will be a high-stress task, to say the least**. Nonetheless, permission from both the federal government and the local people are absolute necessities.  

Travel to field sites is the second bugger. My research is focused along an elevational gradient, which means that I will sample bats at a range of different elevations. Bolivia is a great place for this, because the country has a nearly perfect east-west elevational incline. The fun part about this is that I get to see a lot of the country’s social, environmental, and topographical diversity. The not-so-fun part is that all of this travel is time consuming, and the cost of transporting my entire field team (me, Erika, a Bolivian bat biologist, and my friend Amy) adds up quickly.

Despite it all, things are looking ok. I left La Paz last weekend for a quick stay in Cochabamba, and now I am in Santa Cruz to see my Bolivian family, pick up my field assistant Amy, and meet a biologist at the natural history museum. Little by little, one travels far… so they say.

* Thanks to altitude sickness medication, I can function. Breathing is difficult though. Walking up-hill is a don’t (they are REALLY hard to avoid here), and I won’t be going out for a run any time soon.

** Don’t worry, Erika will help me. She has been to many of these sites before, and some of her previous work (she’s a wildlife vet) has included many anthropological aspects. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without Erika.