The Local Organizers are the Philippines Biodiversity Conservation Foundation, headed up by Lisa Marie J. Paguntalan and Philip Godfrey Jakosalem. Godo and Lisa will be sharing more of the details and getting the conference website up soon.

Preference will be given to ASEAN nationals, and to presenters. Awards will be distributed to provide the best spread possible across countries and research interests.

To apply, fill in the application linked below and email to Tigga NO LATER THAN JUNE 20th at tigga dot kingston at ttu dot edu.

SEABCRU FELLOWSHIPS FOR SEABCO 2015

The half-day workshops will present the SEABCRU protocols that we have developed with the help of the broad SEABCRU membership over the past four years.

1. Acoustic Protocols– best practices for acoustic monitoring. It will include detector selection, deployment, development of call libraries and the SEABCRU call database, and analysis principles. Although beginners can attend, it is targeted at researchers that are currently designing or developing monitoring programs.

 

2. Cave Bat Survey Protocols – best practices for surveying caves for bat diversity. This includes an introduction to approaches for describing cave complexity and structure, bat occupancy, and measures of parameters that influence bat diversity. Suitable for all.

 

3. Flying Fox Survey and Monitoring Protocols. Details of the best approaches for generating consistent colony counts that can underpin spatial or temporal assessments of populations. Suitable for all.

 
Additional workshops may be forth-coming, as will details on registering for workshops.

These workshops are FREE, and will take place one afternoon within the conference. In the late afternoon/evening we will travel to a cave system for practical experience of acoustic approaches and cave surveys.

SEABCRU FORUM — The way forward

On the last day we will hold an OPEN FORUM to discuss the way forward for SE Asian Bat Conservation and the SEABCRU. The first such forum was held at the 1^st SE Asian International Bat Conference in Phuket, Thailand. Over 70 people from 22 countries attended, and the forum identified the four research priorities around which SEABCRU activities have since been organized (Forest Bats, Taxonomy and Systematics, Flying Foxes, and Cave Bats – more details on the SEABCRU website http://www.seabcru.org/). The publication “Research priorities for bat conservation in SE Asia: a consensus approach” (Kingston 2010) summarized the findings of the 2007 forum. We wish to re-visit these priorities and discuss possible new directions (e.g. wildlife trade in bats, quantification of ecosystem services). We will also discuss the organizational structure of the SEABCRU.  As in 2007, EVERYONE ATTENDING THE CONFERENCE IS INVITED AND ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND.

Looking forward to seeing folks there

Tigga

Plenary speakers at the event included the renowned bat specialists Dr. Merlin Tuttle (USA) and Dr. David Westcott (Australia) who spoke at length on ‘The amazing world of bats and a novel view of conservation’ and ‘Living at a landscape scale – flying fox movement and its consequences’ respectively.

The conference included a well-attended symposium dedicated to ‘Understanding and conserving the diversity and ecology of Southeast Asian bats’ which was chaired by Merlin, Dr. Alice Hughes and Dr. Neil Furey.

Twelve papers were presented in the session on topics including bat biogeography, echolocation and systematics, insect pest consumption, pollination and reproductive ecology, flying fox diets, colony assessments and conservation challenges, new methods for prioritizing caves for bat conservation and of course the SEABCRU initiative.

Four of these also won prizes for the best student presentations at the event, namely papers given by Tuanjit Sritongchuay, Sheema Abdul Aziz, Ith Saveng and Krizler Tanalgo. Congratulations bat folks!

Abstracts of all papers presented at the meeting are included in the latest issue of the Cambodian Journal of Natural History which can be downloaded from www.fauna-flora.org/publications/cambodian-journal-of-natural-history/

http://seabco2015.wix.com/home?fb_ref=Default

Abstracts are due 30th April, so get busy everyone!!

Sigit receiving the Spallanzani Medal from Craig Willis, chair of the Spallanzani Awards Committee (Photo copyright Sean Werle)

Congratulations to SEABCRU’s Sigit Wiantoro who was this year’s winner of the Spallanzani Fellowship from the North American Society for Bat Research (NASBR). The Fellowship is awarded “to persons of any age or career stage that show meritorious recent accomplishments that promote bat research, education, and/or conservation programs in their country”. Awardees can come from Africa, Asia, Caribbean Islands (US affiliated islands eligible), Meso-America, South America, Oceania (including US affiliated islands), and Eastern Europe.

The award brought Sigit to the 44th NASBR Meeting in Albany, New York (22nd – 25th October). As awardee, he was the second speaker of the entire conference, giving an excellent talk entitled “Diversity, Discovery and Conservation in Indonesian Karsts ” to a packed audience.

SEABCRU members have been recognized by NASBR with this award before — in 2010 Sara Bumrungsri was the winner, and Lim Boo Liat was one of the founding recipients in 2007, receiving the Senior Fellow award in recognition of contributions throughout his career.

Previous Spallanzani Awardees from SEABCRU — Sara (left) and Lim Boo Liat (right)

Dates: 14-17th August 2015
Location: Kuching, Sarawak
Local Host Institution: University of Malaysia, Sarawak (UNIMAS)
Local Host: Dr Faisal Anwarali Ali Khan
Workshops and trips: we are planning workshops, which may be embedded within the conference or run before, and a post-conference trip to Gunung Mulu World Heritage Area.. Details will follow, but here is notice that you might want to save dates either side of the conference as well.

The 1st and 2nd conferences, in Thailand (2007) and Indonesia (2011) respectively, were fantastic. I am thrilled that Faisal and UNIMAS have so enthusiastically taken up the baton and we hope you will join us in August.

Tigga

Meanwhile, the book of abstracts is below, and provides an excellent opportunity to see what is going on globally in bat research. I’ve highlighted the talks by SEABCRU members and others working on SE Asian bats and list them below.

ibrc_2013_abstracts

Nurul Ain Elias, Tigga Kingston – The interplay between weather and reproduction in three cave-dwelling insectivorous bats in a Malaysian Tropical Rainforest.

Kyle Armstrong  – The Australasian Bat Society: our current challenges and future vision.

Arjan Boonman, Yossi Yovel, Sara Bumrungsri — Echolocation in non-echolocating bats

Alan Hitch, Sigit Wiantoro, Andy Engilis Jr.  – Estimating bat species richness and their community habitat relationships using hierarchical models with presence absence data in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia

Joe Chun-Chia Huang, Elly Jazdyzyk, Meyner Nusalawo, Tigga Kingston — Is bat coffee a potential “wing-wing” tool for biodiversity conservation in Southwestern Sumatra?  AVINET AWARD

Tigga Kingston, *Tammy Mildenstein — The Southeast Asian Bat Conservation Research Unit: regional bat conservation exceeding the sum of its parts.

Tigga Kingston, Maria Sagot, Juliana Senawi, Rosli Hashim & Zubaid Akbar – Spatial analysis of species interactions in diverse assemblages.

Hongjun Lin, Ying Liu, Jiang Feng — Vocal communication in adult greater tube-nosed bats (Murina leucogaster)

Bo Luo et al. — Percieved predation risk triggers cooperation and selfishness in Rhinolophus pusillus.

Nor Zalipah Mohamed, Shahrul Anuar Mod Sah, Gareth Jones — Free nature sercies: flower-visiting bats as pollinating agents for mangrove (Sonneratia) trees in Malaysia.

Kevin Olival et al. — The ecology and field surveillance of bat viruses

Lorelei Patrick, Eve McCulloch, *Luis Ruedas — Molecular and morphological approaches reveal previously obscured species diversity in Southeast Asian Archipelagic Horseshoe Bats, Rhinolophus Gray, 1825

Kendra Phelps, Tigga Kingston — Conserving bats in the Philippines: assessming the impact of cave distrubance on bat assemblages.

Caroline Schoener, Michael Schoener, Gerald Kerth, Ulmar Grafe — Supply determines demand: influence of partner quality and quantity on the interactions between bats and pitcher plants.

Michael Schoener, Caroline Schoener, Ralph Simon, Ulmar Grafe, Gerald Kerth — Echo-acoustic adaptation in bat-pitcher plant mutualism.

Jodi Sedlock, Elizabeth Clare — Island Bat Diets: does it matter more who you are or where you live?

Juliana Senawi, Tigga Kingston — Beyond Size: morphological predictors of bite force in a diverse insecivorous bat assemblage from Malaysia.

Susan Tsang and Sheherazade — Integration of local culture in flying fox conservation startegies in North Sulawesi, Indonesia: A preliminary Framework.

Megan Vodzak, DeeAnn Reeder — Characterization of season and stress-related immunity in pteropodid bats.