The limestone gorges, caves, rivers, forests and scrublands of Krka National Park provide extremely good habitats for bats. At least 24 species are known to occur in the Park, including globally important populations of species such as Schreiber’s bent-wing bat Miniopterus schreibersii. Krka also represents an extremely valuable natural laboratory for researching European bat communities, providing opportunities to study their movements, demographics, habitat associations, and other aspects of their ecology.

However, a key step to researching bat communities is to ensure the methods used to survey them are as effective as possible. The main method for surveying bats in Krka is mist-netting, although there many different ways in which mist-nets can be deployed, with each approach having its own advantages and weaknesses.

One emerging area of research amongst bat researchers is the value of using acoustic lures to boost mist-netting capture rates (and hence develop an improved understanding of local bat communities). Such lures may work well in certain habitats, but their utility in many landscapes (such as those found in Krka) remain poorly explored, they may work better for some species compared to others,  and where they do work well, they may also introduce various survey biases which influence data quality or comparability.

Students taking this option will work on an exciting new research project led by researchers from the Czech Academy of Sciences, and in collaboration with the equipment development company Apodemus (who will provide the necessary equipment). The project will involve setting up a paired ecological experiment, using mist-nets with and without acoustic lures and spinners to determine how effective such lures are for both bat communities as a whole, for specific species, and to critically assess any potential biases they may introduce to long-term monitoring datasets.

All bat handling will be completed by qualified professionals, so no prior bat survey experience is necessary, although students taking this option must be prepared for working long hours at night.

If you would like to do a dissertation or thesis with us but your university hasn’t started dissertation planning or the project selection process, that’s no problem. You can cancel your expedition with zero cancellation charges up until the 15th of April of if you provide documentation from your university saying that they won’t support completing a dissertation project with us.