The sun goes down and the net comes up at Buffalo Ranch. This past Wednesday, we did a roost capture in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone. In this picture, we are waiting to deploy the triple high net. Once the they emerged, we captured sixty of the nearly three hundred female little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) that are using the attic as a roost. Associates and visitors of Buffalo Ranch expressed their curiosity as we caught and extracted the bats from the net. I was delighted to see such interest from non-scientists.
What did you do with the bats that were caught to make sure they wouldnt come back?
On the contrary, the bats are welcome to use that attic as a roost. Our mission wasn’t to remove them. We were there to support a study that looks into how the bats are using these roosts and another that researches the genetic diversity between individuals.