This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2009. The fellowship supports a research and training plan entitled "Application of bioinformatics and novel visualization tools for quantifiying animal dispersal and population dynamics of bats in the aerosphere" for Winifred Frick. The host institution for this research is Boston University, and the sponsoring scientist is Thomas Kunz.
Aeroecology focuses on understanding ecological function and biological importance of organisms that rely on the aerosphere for critical aspects of their life history. Studying behavior and movement of volant animals (birds, bats, and arthropods) in the aerosphere presents considerable challenges, requiring creative integration of technological solutions for data acquisition and analysis. Remote sensing tools, such as Doppler radar, offer much promise for investigating aeroecological processes and dynamics at broad spatial and temporal scales. This research applies new three-dimensional visualization algorithms to a spatially-explicit analysis of NEXRAD radar images to model aerial dynamics of Brazilian free-tailed bats in order to determine animal dispersal and movement patterns. Calibration of volume-rendered 3D bat "clouds" are being developed from census counts derived from thermal infrared imaging data to estimate aerial population sizes and test biological hypotheses about influences of climate change on population dynamics of Brazilian free-tailed bats.
The results contribute to conservation by identifying migratory corridors and seasonal foraging areas, which will help inform decisions on where not to place wind energy facilities, which function as mortality sinks to migratory bat populations. Brazilian free-tailed bats perform valuable ecosystem services by consuming metric tons of insect pests that infest cotton and corn crops. The results predict potential economic costs of climate change on the agricultural industry through loss of ecosystem service value of an important pest predator. Training objectives include advancing quantitative skills in remote sensing, visualization and imagery analysis, population modeling, and GIS.
