Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Understanding population biology is crucial for managing, monitoring and conserving biodiversity. Despite this, biologists have tremendous difficulties accurately characterizing distribution and other dynamics (e.g., size, etc.) of many populations. Key to understanding population biology is a quantitative understanding of evolutionary processes such as dispersal and gene flow which shape population structure. The objective of my research program will be to characterize population structure and investigate the underlying evolutionary processes that lead to this structure in an often misunderstood, but important, group of mammals- the bats. The northern long-eared and little brown bats are widely-distributed North American species. In the summer, females of both species roost in maternity colonies and males typically roost alone. In the fall they move to caves and mines where they copulate and hibernate over-winter. This general life history is typical of many temperate zone bats and therefore this program will provide insight into the biology of many other species. I will use field (including trapping, tagging and re-locating) and molecular techniques to characterize population structure. At the end, I will be able to explicitly define, based on empirical evidence, the spatial and temporal aspects of bat populations.