Audubon Everglades Presents
Fire, trees, water and Everglades restoration: Conservation implications for Florida’s “swamp” bats (Florida bonneted bats)
Presented by Laura Nicholson, MSc & Dillan Hoyt, MSc Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI) & Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC)
Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2022, at 7:00 PM
Zoom-Hosted Presentation (Advance registration required)
6:45-7:00 PM Social time with fellow members and presenters
About the Presentation
Learn about the ground-breaking research and conservation efforts that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute and University of Florida have been conducting on the elusive Florida bonneted bat in South Florida. Listed as federally endangered in 2013, extremely little was known about the ecology of this species making it nearly impossible to develop conservation recommendations. FWRI researchers have discovered how this species differs from many other temperate bat species in their activity patterns, social structure, roost use, and responses to fire and hydrological restoration. The presentation will introduce you to the fascinating world of Florida bonneted bats, take you through the many challenges of chasing these bats through the swamps of South Florida, present recent results of a big project assessing impacts of Everglades restoration on bats, and discuss the conservation implications of this exciting research.
About presenter Dillan Hoyt
Dilly is a keen traveler and bat enthusiast and has managed to combine the two, resulting in experience researching bats in four continents! She obtained her BSci in Environmental Biology at the University of Nottingham, U.K., and an MSci in Island Biodiversity and Conservation at the University of Exeter where she investigated the effects of wildfire on bats in the Mediterranean-type ecosystems in Irvine, California. She aspires to conduct a PhD in tropical bat ecology and conservation in the near future, where she is broadly interested in the effect of land use change on bat communities. Dilly has worked for FWRI since January 2021 as a field biologist collecting data for the Everglades restoration and bats project, and now leads the data analysis for research on Florida bonneted bat natural roost selection.
About presenter Laura Nicholson
Laura is passionate about science, education and habitat restoration. She obtained her B.S. from Rice University in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with a minor in Environmental Studies, conducted independent research on pollinator ecology in Ecuador and completed her MSc at University of Florida in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. For her master’s, Laura led a large-scale data collection effort to assess the effects of hydrological restoration on the foraging ecology of Florida bonneted bats and the rest of the South Florida bat community, as part of FWRI’s project to understand how bats may respond to Everglades Restoration.
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