Animal biologist Anna Doty analyzes the behavior of bats for conservational purposes

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The first thing you notice when talking to Prof. Anna Doty is her friendly nature and her bubbly persona. Anna loves talking about her work, which is understandable because she is studying one of the most fascinating animals on the planet, bats. Her passion for studying their unique behaviors and ecological importance is palpable and you cannot help but be captivated by her dedication.

 

As an animal biologist, Anna found her “scientific home” at California State University (Sacramento). She and her team are interested in the physiological ecology of small mammals to understand how they respond to environmental changes affected by the everchanging climate. The efforts of Anna and her team directly support the ongoing conservation efforts which ensure that the bats continue to have a home in California and beyond.

 

We sat down with Anna to learn all about her work and hear all the cute bat stories she had to share.

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Let’s start at your beginning. Where did you grow up and when did you know you were going to be a scientist?

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I grew up in Sacramento, California, which is also where I work now. I would not say I always knew I wanted to be a scientist, but I knew I always wanted to work with animals. When I was little, I thought I was going to be a veterinarian and then, as I got older, I changed my mind and thought I might be an environmental scientist. After I graduated college, I knew I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, so I did my master’s and PhD in Zoology but it was not until my postdoc that I decided to get into academia. I was not even sure that I was going to go the research route because I also expected I might like a position with the state or federal government, but I ended up getting an academic position and I have stayed in academic positions since that point.

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Did you have scientists in the family/did your family support your career choice?

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In my immediate family there are no scientists. My parents are lawyers, and my brother is in finance, but I do have an aunt who was a nurse. Besides her nobody else is in the scientific sphere. However, my family was always very supportive of me and always encouraged me to do what I wanted to do with my career. I am really lucky that I have had a very understanding and supportive family.​​​

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How was your university experience?

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I went to UC Berkeley for my undergraduate degree, and I enjoyed college, but I also struggled quite a bit. The environment is just a lot different than being in high school and it is being away from your family. There was one year where I really struggled academically and I attribute that to needing to grow up, but it was really good for me. My experiences moving to South Africa for my master’s and then moving to Australia for my PhD were also important for me to gain independence and gain a true sense of self and really understand that I am capable of doing things on my own without a huge support system readily available to me. It was really my postgraduate studies that helped form me into a functioning adult that can do research and think of my own ideas, which was not a cakewalk for me. I struggled a lot, and I think that is something I like to talk to my students about. They think all their professors were the top of their class but that is not necessarily true. We all have our own struggles, so I am glad I made it out and I did perfectly fine, but I had to work really hard.

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You are interested in flying mammals such as bats and flying squirrels. What particular aspect of their biology do you study?

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My journey into bat biology which started me on this trajectory is my interest in torpor and hibernation, so heterothermy and mammals. That is something I was very interested in when I started my master’s degree, and I enjoyed it so much that I did a very similar type of work for my PhD. I would say I got into bats not because of bats themselves but because I wanted to study an aspect of biology that many mammals display, and bats are just a great study animal for that. I have also branched out into doing other types of work, so I do not just work on ecological physiology of bats. I do a lot of research that involves other aspects of that biology such as pure ecology. For example, I do a lot of roost selection, so where they live and why they live in those areas and what can affect their choice of roost location.

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What methods do you use and how cooperative are the bats?

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Most of my work is field related using bats. I also do acoustic work, so I put out echolocation recorders and that does not require you to handle the bats whatsoever. However, my main line the research does require bat handling. We catch them in these large nets called mist nets or traps called harp traps. Those are called harp traps because they have fishing line strung like a harp and a bat flies into it and then drops down into a little holding bag. Those methods work really well to catch most species of bats, but not all of them. Some bats are a bit feistier than others and are more uncooperative and then there are species that are very docile and gentle.

I will take measurements like their forearms using calipers and I will weigh them using a spring scale. I check for parasites and for wing damage. I will also measure their ear with a ruler, and I will determine their sex and see if they are reproductive. For the most part I would say the bats are pretty cooperative. They can be nippy, but we always wear gloves, and we are trained in handling them.

I also like to put very tiny radio transmitters on the bats so I can see where they are living. That requires me to trim a small portion of hair between the shoulder blades and I use a little bit of ostomy glue, and I stick the transmitter on the back of the bat, let it dry, and then let the bat go. While they do not enjoy the process, I do not usually have issues doing any of this. It takes getting used to, but once you are comfortable managing a very small mammal like bats, because they are very fragile, then you get the muscle memory and you know how to handle them.

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What was the highlight of your career so far?

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I think the best experience I have had doing research has been in Australia. I absolutely loved living and researching bats in Australia. It is just such a beautiful place compared to the United States. There are far fewer people and it is a lot easier to be out there on your own and I love marsupials. In particular there is one location that I really loved working in called Warrumbungle National Park. That was where I did one of my initial PhD studies. It was such a beautiful location where you can see the stars clearly at night. I caught a lot of cool bats species, and I liked that it was a very calming and fulfilling place for me to do work.

I have also enjoyed working in Sequoia National Park here in California. This is a very special place to me because I love the foothills and of course the giant sequoias are very special. The wildlife and the plant diversity there are also really incredible.

My favorite study I conducted was the one that came out last year on roost selection of the California myotis in Sequoia National Park following a wildfire. That study was really difficult to do, and I was proud of it.  I felt like I got interesting results from that study about the response of bats to wildfire. It was a culmination of using a lot of the knowledge that I had gained during my masters, PhD and postdoc and taking all these techniques and my understanding of bats and doing something that was very difficult.

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Can you share a future research goal of yours?

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I would like to branch out and do some work on other small mammals. Right now, I have a very keen interest in shrew biology and so I am trying to involve myself in a study that is hopefully going to start in the next couple of years on an ornate shrew that lives here in California. I am very interested in shrew physiology as well as ecology because they are understudied even though they are a really important mammalian species, and they are common here in California. I am surprised how little research has been done on them and I would love to contribute more to the knowledge based on shrews. There are quite a few animals people do not give enough credit to, and I feel like shrews are one of those animals. I do not want to do a specific study on this animal, I just want to study shrews in general.

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What would be your advice for students who are interested in studying bats, but have no idea where to start?

 

The most important thing would be to contact a researcher with whom you would be interested in volunteering. Bat biology is a little bit stickier to get into if you want to handle bats because you do need to have a pre-exposure rabies vaccine, so it requires a level of commitment. If that is something that you are interested in, then you absolutely should volunteer with a lab so you can get the hands-on experience you need to feel confident handling bats, identifying bats, and even doing acoustic detection and identifying bat calls.

Another option, which is a paid option, is to take a bat capture and handling course, of which there are a few in California. There are quite a few researchers and biologists who lead bat capture and handling courses so you can get the experience you need to feel comfortable and confident working with bats.

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Who, what, when, where & why?

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Who?

- would you like to conduct research with if you had the chance?

One of the people with whom I did my PhD, Shannon Currie, works at the University of Melbourne. She is an incredible scientist, and I love every minute I have ever worked with her. My goal is to do another study with Doctor Currie because she is so smart and she has such incredible ideas. I do not know how she comes up with these ideas. She is a natural scientist, and I always feel when I work with her I learn a lot.

 

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What?

- do you like to do in your free time?

This is a great question because I feel like as scientists a lot of us get enveloped in our jobs and it is easy to ignore yourself outside of your career. I felt like I had done that for a really long time. About six months ago, I started riding horses and that has been the best thing for my mental health and I am now a lot happier having a hobby outside of my job. I spend a lot of my free time riding horses and I really love it. It has given me a purpose outside of my career and I am very grateful for that.

 

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When?

- do you find inspiration for your research?

When I am out in the field and we are capturing bats, the process requires that you set up nets and then you wait a little while and you check the nets. You are usually sitting out there with people, whether my students or with other researchers or colleagues, and you get to talking and you are thinking about the research that you are currently doing and usually we end up having fruitful discussions and cool ideas. If you are willing to listen, students can have some great ideas, and it is fun to talk about those ideas with them.

 

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Where?

- is your favorite travel destination?

It has to be Australia. I love Australia. It is my favorite place I have lived, hands down. I lived in South Africa as well as Australia and I have been to a few different places like Costa Rica, New Zealand, Mexico, Japan and Europe but Australia is just so beautiful, and I love the animals. When I think about traveling, I think about the wildlife. That is my priority, and my favorite animals live in Australia, so it is always going to be my favorite travel destination.

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Why?

- did you choose your specific research topic(s)?

It is because I got really interested in torpor and hibernation and I got interested in that topic because I studied abroad in South Africa when I was an undergraduate. There I met my future master's advisor. She was giving a talk to our class about torpor and hibernation in small mammals and birds and I thought that was the most incredible topic, so I applied to work with her directly for my undergraduate degree.

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How?

- do you deal with setbacks?

Keep positive. It is inevitable with almost any study that you will encounter a setback - whether you are unable to locate your animal of interest, equipment stops working, or you aren’t collecting the data you expected - you have to continue moving forward. I think many students don’t realize how common it is to experience big and consequential setbacks in research. Don’t give up! It’s always good to have more than one backup plan.

 

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…or?

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Attend a party or be the host?

I will attend, less clean up.

 

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Museum or movie theatre?

Museum definitely – I do not like to sit still, so museums are easier for me.

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Sneakers or dress shoes?

Sneakers.

 

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Optimist or pessimist?

I would say I am an optimist. I can be pessimistic at times, but I think overall I am optimistic.

 

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Ambition or comfort?

I think both because it is good to be ambitious but then there is a point where it is important to be comfortable with where you are currently. It is always good to grow but self-acceptance and enjoying what you are doing in the moment is also important. There is a healthy dose of ambition and then there is ambition that can be self-destructive.

 

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See the future or change the past?

See the future – that is all we can do right now. We feel like it is so important for us to see how we can change things moving forward and be better. There are too many things to list that I am sure we would like to change about the past and we cannot. In the moment sometimes you do not know the mistake is being made and it is better to try to just be better moving forward.  

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The interview was conducted by Nicole Kilian and has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Image sources: Anna Doty.

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