17thAUSTRALASIAN BAT SOCIETY CONFERENCE

Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

29 March – 1 April 2016

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

DAILY SUMMARY

WEDNESDAY 30 MARCH 8:00 – 9:00

Registrations – Coffee & Tea

9:00 – 9:35 Welcome

9:35 – 10:15

Plenary

THURSDAY 31 MARCH 8:00 – 8:45

Registrations – Coffee & Tea

8:45 – 9:15 Plenary

9:15 – 10:00 Session 3

Flying Fox Management

FRIDAY 1 APRIL 8:00 – 8:30

Registrations – Coffee & Tea 8:30 – 9:00 Session 6

Acoustics 9:00 – 10:15 Session 7 Roosting ecology & Nest Boxes

10:15 – 10:45 Morning Tea

10:00 – 10:30 Morning Tea

10:15 – 10:45 Morning Tea

10:45 – 12:30 Session 1

Conservation & Management

10:30 – 11:30 Session 3

Flying Fox Management

11:30 – 12:45 Session 4 Education

10:45 – 12:00 Session 8

Diet & Foraging Ecology

12:00-12:30 Field Trip Briefing

12:30 – 13:45 Lunch

12:45 – 14:00 Lunch

12:30 – 13:45 Lunch

13:45 – 15:00 Session 2

Techniques

14:00 – 14:30 Session 5

Taxonomy & Longevity

13:45 – 15:00 Session 9

Disturbance

15:00 – 15:30 Afternoon Tea

14:30 – 15:00 Afternoon Tea

15:00 – 15:30 Afternoon Tea

DAILY PROGRAM

WEDNESDAY 30 MARCH

9:00 - 9:10 Welcome to Country

9:10 - 9:20 Welcome from the Tasmanian Conference Organising Committee

9:20 - 9:35 Australasian Bat Society President Address

PLENARY

9:35 - 10:15 Progress towards recovering New Zealand’s threatened bat populations, 1995-2015

Colin FJ O’Donnell

10:15 - 10:45 Morning Tea

SESSION 1 Management and Conservation Chair: Lisa Cawthen

10:45 - 11:00 Protection of long-tailed bats in the top of the South Island, New Zealand

Debs Martin, Brian Lloyd & Michael North

11:00 - 11:15 Assessment of population and individual effects of exposure of New Zealand lesser short-tailed bats to diphacinone during a rodent baiting operation

Gillian Dennis, Brett Gartrell, Colin O’Donnell, Doug Armstrong & Alastair Robertson

15:30 – 17:00 Poster Session

15:00 –16:30 Annual General Meeting

15:30 – 16:00 Session 9

Disturbance

16:00 – 17:00 Awards & Close

18:00 – 00:00 CONERENCE DINNER

11:15 - 11:30 Managing microbats in houses: some recent challenging cases in far north Queensland

Greg Ford, Jeff Middleton & Lauren Dibben

11:30 - 11:45 Microbats and road and rail structures in Australia: a guideline for assessment and management

Vanessa Gorecki & Alison Martin

11:45 - 12:00 Recent Innovations in Microbat Mitigation on Road Projects in NSW

Josie Stokes & Veronica Silver

12:00 - 12:15 Progress towards implementing the soon to be released Southern Bent-wing Bat Recovery Plan

Lindy Lumsden, Amanda Bush, Peter Holz, Jasmin Hufschmid, Yvonne Ingeme, Micaela Jemison, Tony Mitchell, Terry Reardon, Emmi Scherlies & Reto Zollinger

12:15 - 12:30 The ecology and conservation of the Christmas Island flying-fox

Christopher Todd, David Westcott, John Martin, Karrie Rose & Justin A Welbergen

12:30 - 13:45 Lunch

SESSION 2 Techniques Chair: Greg Ford

13:45 - 14:00 The efficacy and risk of disturbance of monitoring Southern Bent-wing Bats at non-breeding caves

Amanda Bush, Lindy Lumsden & Yvonne Ingeme

14:00 - 14:15 PIT tag technology at a stretch: A case study on the critically endangered southern bent-wing bat (Miniopterus orianae bassanii)

Emmi Scherlies, Ruth Lawrence, Lindy Lumsden, Noel Meyers & Terry Reardon

14:15 - 14:30 Problems of assessing reproductive condition in long-term bat projects

Robert Bender

14:30 - 14:45 The Rescue of 148 White-striped Freetail Bat Austronomus australis pups

Anne Williams, Narawan Williams & Amy Rowles

14:45 - 15:00 I Spy: The use of remote camera technology to monitor flying-fox camps and examine behaviour

Tim Pearson & Peggy Eby

15:00 - 15:30 Afternoon Tea

POSTER SESSION

15:30 - 17:00

Poster 1 What are flying foxes doing in Adelaide? Researching the disease and ecological implications of Grey-headed flying foxes in South Australia

W Boardman, C Bradshaw, T Prowse, G.Crameri, A McKeown, D Westcott, T Reardon, & C Caraguel

Poster 2 Spatial movements of Grey-headed flying-foxes Pteropus poliocephalus in Adelaide and their proximity to horses

K Burbridge, W Boardman, C Bradshaw, T Prowse, G Crameri, A McKeown, D Westcott, T Reardon, & C Caraguel

Poster 3 Protecting hollow-bearing trees from fire in the Adelaide Hills

Terry Reardon

Poster 4 Remote Monitoring of a Victorian Maternity Cave

Yvonne Ingeme, Amanda Bush, Lindy Lumsden & Reto Zollinger

Poster 5 Ancestral reconstruction of skull form in Old World leaf-nosed bats (Hipposideridae & Rhinonycteridae) using geometric morphometrics

Suzanne J Hand, Camilo Lopez Aguirre, Michael Archer, Kyle N Armstrong,

Karen H Black, Stephen Wroe & Laura AB Wilson

Poster 6 A pipeline and app for massive filtering and assisted inspection of enormous acoustic datasets

Kyle N Armstrong, Ken P Aplin & Stephen Crotty

Poster 7 Modelling the thermal characteristics of rare Pilbara bat roosts in mines and caves

Yifu Chen, Zihua Zhu, Kyle N Armstrong & Zhao Feng Tian

Poster 8 The Marianas Fruit Bat: Current Population Trends, Threats, and Recovery Efforts

Bethany A. Chagnon, Robert Ulloa & Anne Orlando

Poster 9 Planes, trains (bats) and automobiles: what’s happening with microbats at the Gold Coast Airport?

Greg Ford, Elvira Lanham, Carissa Free, Jess Bracks & Norbert Benton

Poster 10 Eavesdropping on ghost bats: Using bioacoustics to uncover characteristics of social organisation in an iconic bat

Nicola Hanrahan, Justin Welbergen, Christopher Turbill & Kyle N Armstrong

Poster 11 Use of fragmented agricultural landscapes by bats in the Tasmanian Midlands

Kirsty Dixon, Chris Johnson, Menna Jones & Andy Spate

Poster 12 Bats of Tasmania – an Overview

Kirsty Dixon, Lisa Cawthen, Andy Spate, Cathy Dorling & Anke Franke

Poster 13 A community discovering its own backyard

Aimee Linke & Renata Rix

Poster 14 The bats of Danum Valley Borneo: 2016 Update

Cross C, Dowling T, Maillet A, Roberts E, Suffredini P, Usher-Chandler L, Weiss V1, Wingfield A, Witherby B, Wuth M, Armstrong K, Reardon T, Robson SKA

THURSDAY 31 MARCH PLENARY

8:45 - 9:15 Status and Trends of Australia’s EPBC-Listed Flying-Foxes: the results to date of the National Flying-Fox Monitoring Program

David A. Westcott, Daniel K. Heersink, Adam McKeown & Peter Caley

SESSION 3 Flying Fox Management Chair: Tim Pearson

9:15 - 9:30 Flying Fox Critical incidents: Responding to the Casino Heat Stress and Storm Events

Lib Ruytenberg & Renata Phelps

9:30 - 9:45 What influences the presence of black flying-foxes on residential streets in an Australian subtropical city?

JT Towsey, DF Shanahan, RA Fuller & AW Goldizen

9:45 - 10:00 The challenges associated with managing a large breeding camp of Spectacled Flying-foxes in the Cairns CBD - A case study of working with local government to get positive outcomes

Martin Cohen

10:00 - 10:30 Morning Tea

10:30 - 10:45 Flying Fox Management – a Local Government’s Journey

Achim Eberhart & Mark Ready

10:45 - 11:00 Flying-fox conservation management policy: A cautionary tale from New South Wales

Evan Quartermain

11:00 - 11:30 Flying-fox management – an update from the Flying-fox Sub-committee

Maree Treadwell-Kerr & Louise Saunders

SESSION 4 Education Chair: Ben Paris

11:30 - 11:45 Bat Brigade to the Bat Portal! – A Citizen Science Project

Sylvia Clarke & Aimee Linke

11:45 - 12:00 Monitoring populations of urban microbats bats with volunteers from the general public

Casey Visintin & Rodney van der Ree

12:00 - 12:15 Societal values for flying foxes and assessing impact of education/ interpretation programs in changing attitudes and impact of this on conservation effort and outcomes

Maree Treadwell-Kerr

12:15 - 12:30 Bats in museums and zoos

Daniel Lunney

12:30 - 12:45 Australasian Bat Night

Maree Treadwell-Kerr

12:45 - 14:00 Lunch

SESSION 5 Taxonomy and Longevity Chair: Andy Spate

14:00 - 14:15 Exceptional lifespan predicts the fatty acid composition of cellular membranes in vespertilionid bats

Christopher Turbill & Thomas Ruff

14:15 - 14:30 Genome-wide high throughput DNA sequencing helps resolve long standing issues in bat taxonomy

Kyle N Armstrong, Bastien Llamas, Terry B Reardon & Stephen C Donnellan

14:30 - 15:00 Afternoon Tea

15:00 - 16:30 ABS Annual General Meeting

18:00 - 00:00 Conference Dinner

FRIDAY 1 APRIL

SESSION 6 Acoustics Chair: Kirsty Dixon

8:30 - 8:45 Acoustic Variation in Gould’s Wattled Bats

Chris Corben

8.45 - 9:00 An exercise in frustration: Technical challenges involved in creating a

lexicon of flying-fox vocalisations

Tim Pearson & Ken Cheng

SESSION 7 Roost ecology and management Chair: Lindy Lumsden

9:00 - 9:15 Roosting behaviour and social system of the Ussuri tube-nosed bat (Murina ussuriensis) in Japan David A Hill, Jon Flanders & Dai Fukui

9:15 - 9:30 The Secret Hiding Places of the Southern Myotis (Myotis macropus): A tale of Culverts and Bridges

Alison Martin & Amanda Lisson

9:30 - 9:45 Bat boxes - an international review of their use and preliminary

findings of two local bat box research studies

Niels Rueegger & Brad Law

9.45 - 10:00 Using paint colour to modify thermal profiles of nest boxes

Stephen Griffiths, Natalie Briscoe, Pia Lentini, Jessica Rowland & Kylie Robert

10:00 - 10:15 Microclimate of bat roost boxes in Warrumbungle National Park

Murray V Ellis, Alycia Campbell & Jennifer E Taylor

10:15 - 10:45 Morning Tea

SESSION 8 Diet and Foraging Ecology Chair: Kyle Armstrong

10:45 - 11:00 Microbats suppress insect pest populations in NSW cotton fields

Heidi Kolkert, Nick Reid & Rhiannon Smith

11:00 - 11:15 Distribution and key foraging habitat of the Large-footed Myotis (Myotis macropus) in the highly modified Port Jackson estuary: an overlooked, but vulnerable bat

Leroy Gonsalves & Brad Law

11:15 - 11:30 Linking the needs of insectivorous bats and people at urban wetlands

Tanja Straka, Pia Lentini, Lindy Lumsden, Brendan Wintle, Dave Kendal & Rodney van der Ree

11:30 - 11:45 Foraging biology of the Large-eared pied bat, Chalinolobus dwyeri

Elizabeth Williams & Bruce Thomson

11:45 - 12:00 Dietary composition of insectivorous bats of the Top End of Australia

Damian J Milne, Chris J Burwell & Chris R Pavey

12:00 - 12:30 FIELD TRIP BRIEFING

12:30 - 13:45 Lunch

13:45 - 14:00 Microbats of Brisbane’s Inner West

Monika & Martin Rhodes

14:00 - 14:15 Switching on the bat signal: five years of long-tailed bat acoustic monitoring in Auckland, New Zealand

Ben Paris

Session 9 Disturbance Chair: Leroy Gonsalves

14:15 - 14:30 The behaviour of bats at harp traps: is a 5-banker enough?

C Cross, T Dowling, A Maillet A, E Roberts, P Suffredini, Usher-L Chandler, V Weiss, A Wingfield, B Witherby, M Wuth, K Armstrong K, T Reardon, & SKA Robson

14:30 - 14:45 Microbats in Warrumbungle National Park two years after extensive bushfires

Murray V Ellis, Jennifer E Taylor & Alycia Campbell

14:45 - 15:00 Post-wildfire physiological ecology of an Australian microbat

Anna Doty, Brad Law, Clare Stawski & Fritz Geiser

15:00 - 15:30 Afternoon tea

15:30 - 15:45 Changes in Survival of Large-footed Myotis in streams with contrasting disturbance history

Brad Law, Mark Chidel & Peter Law

15:45 - 16:00 Predicted climate change impacts on the phylogenetic diversity of bats across the Australian continent

Pia Lentini, April Reside, Kyle Armstrong, Laura Pollock, Terry Reardon & Stephen Donnellan

16:00 - 17:00 Awards and Conference Close