Investigating the Bat Population of Scituate, MA

Why should we care about bats? Bats are a major contributor to a thriving ecosystem and help humans in many ways. In the wild, bats eat a lot of insects that would overpopulate an area or would spread disease otherwise. By eating the bugs, bats help people by lessening the need for chemical pesticides that harm nature. Bats are also huge pollinators in warm climates such as deserts and the tropics. They distribute pollen and seeds from plant to plant to help repopulate and strengthen nature, specifically these plant species: cocoa, bananas, agave, guava, mangoes, saguaros, and eucalyptus. Without the help of pollinating bats, most ecosystems would slowly die out. For example, the great baobab trees located in the East African savannah depend on bats to stay alive. Another example is in caves, where bats carry in different nutrients for other species in the cave that need them to survive. Humans also benefit from bats in various ways. There have been multiple engineering advances in technology that are based on bats' wings and echolocation. Inventions like drones and wingsuits are inspired by bats’ bodies and wings.

By: Sophia V.

This is how our experiment began, on a school night ~ April 27th, 2021. After making plans in our Science classes, I had no idea if any students would show up to monitor bats. I'll always be grateful for Andie, Carolyn, and Sandra (pictured here), who collected our very first recordings at Egypt Beach Marsh. They kicked off our investigation and worked together to identify four different bat species, including the Indiana myotis, which is endangered in Massachusetts!

In addition to Andie, Carolyn, and Sandra, I'm thankful for all of the students who volunteered to gather bat tracking data during the evenings: Amelia, Zoey, Reed, MJ, Jack, Alyssa, Nicolai, Drew, Savana, Liah, May, Alexa, Kelsie, Sophie, Nora, Caitlin, Cecilia, Courtney, Grace, Mary, Hannah, and Clement. On several evenings, there were no bats recorded. Although this still provided valuable data, I'm happy that students kept a terrific attitude while waiting patiently for something to record. Everyone truly embodied the explorer mindset, which is exactly what we hoped to inspire through the Nat Geo Educator-Explorer partnership.

We plan to continue this project beyond the 2020-2021 school year, by making further observations with each incoming Grade 8 Science class. Our current goal is to install bat boxes on our school campus, in order to help support the bat population in our town. One of our future goals is to research how we can participate more formally in a data collection program, such as the North American Bat Monitoring Program.