Chiroptophilia - A Post-CNHP Adventure

By Savanna Smith
(former CNHP work study)

As a Chicago Botanic Garden Conservation and Land Management botany intern at the Shoshone Field Office of the BLM, my love for plants has grown exponentially this summer. I’ve gotten to know the best method for beating the seeds off a Purshia tridentata bush, smelled many a sagebrush, and puzzled over whether or not a Penstemon’s anthers dehisced from the center or the sides. However, I can’t deny my roots in the field of wildlife biology, which is what I studied as an undergraduate. As a climber, it seemed natural to be interested in bats since they often roost in the cracks and crevices only accessible to rock climbers. (For any other wildlife-enthusiast climbers out there, you should check out Climbers for Bat Conservation on Facebook, a cool citizen science project!) My undergraduate thesis research dealt with the acoustic side of bat science, but I didn’t participate in any of the field work for the data. So, you can imagine my excitement when I learned that I would get to assist in several bat-related projects this summer.

The first project involved setting up stationary acoustic bat detectors with Ross from Idaho Fish & Game - this work was conducted for the North American Bat Monitoring Program, a continent-wide protocol aimed at gathering data on the status and trends of bat populations across North America. After securing these detectors during the daylight, we waited until nightfall to conduct mobile acoustic surveys. This involves attaching a bat detector on top of the truck and driving at a constant speed for at least 25 km, all while recording the bats flying overhead. This was fun because I got to watch the calls coming in on a spectrogram in real time.

Last week, myself and other interns had the opportunity to attend a bat bioblitz - an event where scientists attempt to capture all the biodiversity in an area. We set up triple-high mist nets over the river and patiently waited for bats to fly in. We saw and recorded many bats, but only managed to trap two in the nets. Regardless, it was really cool seeing them up-close and learning how to take measurements. At our station, we captured an adult female silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans) and a juvenile male Yuma myotis (Myotis yumanensis).

We camped out after the bioblitz and got a quick night of sleep before returning to the office for a day of caving in Gypsum lava tube, the second largest lava tube in the continental US! This was a new experience for me, and I enjoyed the pressing silence and impenetrable darkness that each bend in the passage concealed. In the tube, we found pack rats, a jackrabbit carcass, and even a few bat friends hanging out almost two miles into the tube! It was a great experience to put myself in such a different environment.

I’m thankful that this internship has allowed me to gain experience in a variety of areas, especially since bats are creatures I’ve been interested in for a long time. I only have six more weeks left here in Idaho, and I’m excited to see what’s next.

Sunset view before the mobile acoustic transect.

Adult female silver-haired bat. 

Juvenile male Yuma myotis. 

The entrance to Gypsum lava tube.

Jackrabbit carcass.

Kind of low quality photo of the inside of the tube - check out the multiple levels!

Congrats to CNHP Graduates Alyssa and Savanna!

Esteemed CNHP work studies Alyssa Meier and Savanna Smith graduated this spring from CSU, both with honors. (Whoo!)

Alyssa worked with CNHP for nearly all four years of college, completing jobs varying from rare plant data entry to field work that included some nasty allergies (and the occasional ant bite). She was one of the Siegele interns last summer and an invaluable contributor to the nerd word of the day. She received her Bachelor's in Fish Wildlife and Conservation Biology with a minor in Creative Writing. Now she is off to collar elk calves in southern Colorado for the CPW and will return to do field work for CNHP at the Air Force Academy later this summer.

Savanna was with CNHP for the past year where she helped enter data from the endless pile of element occurrence records. For her honors thesis project, she studied the effects of noise and other factors on Colorado bat occupancy with the help of zoologist Jeremy Siemers (a fantastic poster of her findings is on the hallway wall next to the kitchen). She received her Bachelor's in Wildlife Biology with a minor in Ecological Restoration. Soon she will be headed north to work for Idaho's Bureau of Land Management.

These two will be sorely missed (and bribery attempts to get them to return to CNHP are undoubtedly in the foreseeable future). Congratulations to both of you! Have fun (and good luck) "adulting" in the real world!

Savanna on the steps of the CSU Administration Building.

(Typical) Alyssa giving one last huzzah as a CSU Ram.

Life as a CNHP Work Study: Taming of the Shrew

By Alyssa Meier

At the end of the hall here at CNHP, there is a small lab in which, not ten feet apart, sit two very different worlds. On one side, we have a freezer filled to the brim with shrew specimens dating back to 2012. On the other, a cabinet loaded to the top with plant specimens all the way from 1993.

Collection of shrew specimens.

Shelf of plant specimens from the 90s.

This past semester, I had the privilege of being a part of two projects that dealt with these specimens. The first project involved taking the old plant specimens, digging through twenty-year-old field journals, and trying to glean enough information to make a label so I could turn them in to the Colorado State University Herbarium. The second involved separating the shrews into individual baggies and giving each a catalog number so we could cart them off to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Each of these projects had its own merits. Making labels for the plants involved a bit of detective work. I was snooping into the past—the far-off years of the 90s when I was just a kid and these plants were still alive. Of course, the field journals of each individual botanist had their own nuances to navigate just to obtain any relevant information, and this sometimes involved tracking down GIS files and surfing through records in Biotics. Many times the information was simply lost over the years.

A pressed rusty lupine (Lupinus pusillus) specimen.

Comparatively, working with shrew specimens was an overload of information. Dozens of grocery bags loaded with sandwich bags loaded with shrews. All of them frozen together. The unfortunate thing about studying shrews is that, because they are so small, it is difficult to draw any inference on habitat or location without the use of pitfall traps or other lethal methods. Thus, the specimens collected are bagged and frozen together. My job was to thaw out the shrews (the smell is indescribable), meticulously peel them apart (so I don’t accidentally rip them in half), put them in separate snack bags, and give them a catalog number.

Me gently peeling apart two shrews that have been frozen together.

Botany and zoology—they both have their ups and downs. One thing's for certain: reeking shrews and crispy plants are still better than case changes.