Little brown bats are one of the most common bats in Oregon and the United States. Their scientific name is Myotis lucifugus. The group of bats in the genus Myotis are called the “mouse-eared” bats.
Bats play an important role in controlling insect populations. In North America, bats are the primary predators of night-flying insects. Some species of bats can capture several hundred insects an hour, including insect species that can devastate valuable plants or crops.
A major benefit of bats in the garden is their appetite for insects. They consume about 50 to 100 percent of their body weight each day. Their favorite foods include garden pests such as beetles and moths. They also eat lots of mosquitoes, some of which carry diseases such as...
Island biogeography has strongly influenced the study of biodiversity because
archipelagos provide natural model systems for investigating patterns of diversity and the
processes that shape ecological communities. I investigated the influence of area and
isolation of islands (n = 32) in the Gulf of California, Mexico on patterns of richness,...
Vegetation provides food for many insects, and many insects serve as food for bats. We investigated the linkages among these three trophic levels in riparian areas throughout the Oregon Coast Range by examining the influence of vegetation cover, composition, and structure on the activity of nocturnal insects and bats, the...
We hypothesize that the extraordinary maneuverability and efficiency of bats in flight are in part due to the compliant nature of their wing structures. We utilize the parameters of bat bones measured by biologists to create a biologically inspired model of a flapping system consisting of a rotating hub actuator...