2019 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
音響GPSロガーを用いた，人為的景観環境下の野生コウモリの移動生態に関する研究
| Project/Area Number |
19F19090
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| Research Institution | Doshisha University |
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Principal Investigator |
飛龍 志津子 同志社大学, 生命医科学部, 教授 (70449510)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
HEIM OLGA 同志社大学, 生命医科学部, 外国人特別研究員
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-10-11 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | Movement behavior / Diet analysis |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In September 2019, I joined a short field trip to the Fukui prefecture in order to capture and tag Japanese horseshoe bats and to collect fecal samples. After this trip, I viewed the available GPS-data from bats that were tracked from the year 2015 to 2018. This data set allowed an extensive analysis using generalized linear mixed effect models. This statistical analysis is almost finished and will be summarized and discussed in the manuscript draft that I have composed.
In parallel, I have extracted the DNA from the available fecal samples originating from various bat species (including the Japanese horseshoe bats). Also, specific DNA regions (from all samples) that are used to identify prey insects were amplified using a set of 3 different primers. Due to the coronavirus outbreak and the resulting limits on resource access (e.g. indexing primers, laboratory) the diet analysis is currently on hold until the situation becomes less serious.
Another major achievement was the resubmission of a manuscript on the topic of flight and echolocation call behavior of Japanese horseshoe bats. Due to my skills, especially in statistical analysis, I was able to join and contribute to the manuscript.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Overall, the research is progressing well, as we are within the time schedule of the original research plan.
Regarding the research on bat movement behavior of wild bats, the amount of available data grants its analysis and publication without the immediate need to collect new data.
Regarding the analysis of wild bat’s diet composition, we are also progressing well, as the majority of laboratory work has been completed. However, we still require movement data in addition to fecal samples that were collected from the same tagged individuals in order to make a connection between the movement behavior and diet composition.
In general, however, the majority of the work until publication regarding movement behavior analysis and diet analysis has been conducted. Therefore, I expect to submit a manuscript on the movement behavior of wild Japanese horseshoe bats within the next few months.
In addition to the original research plan, we were able to add a few new facets in order to compare not only the energetic balance between bat individuals from different landscape types, but also in order to compare other measures of the health status, such as information on the virome and microbiome, based on fecal samples, as well as information on the immune system and chronic stress, based on blood samples.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
My plan for the next few months is to finalize the statistical analysis of the GPS-data and to summarize and discuss the results in the already existing manuscript draft and to submit it to a high-ranking journal. Furthermore, I plan to finish the preparations of DNA-samples for the next generation sequencing, so that our collaborator Dr. Eero Vesterinen in Finland can analyze the data bioinformatically before sending them back to us for a statistical analysis.
This year, I also would like to concentrate more on the topic of energy expenditure vs. energy consumption by wild bats. For this purpose, we are going to conduct a morphological analysis of the available fecal samples in order to gain information on which insect species or groups were eaten most often. Based on this and other published information on bat energetics, we can roughly estimate how much energy bats ingested. Since for some of these bats we also have GPS-data, we aim at estimating the energy expenditure due to the energy lost during flight.
Due to the corona-virus pandemic it remains unclear to what extent we are going to able to collect new data this year. Therefore, I plan to design a laboratory study with captive bats that supports the aim of the original research goal.
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