Bezos Earth Fund and Smithsonian Leap
to the Aid of Endangered Frog Species
STRI Zoom
Seminar Series
Bat Talk with Dr. Rachel Page,
May 20, 2020
May 21, 2020
Panama
Find out more about why bats carry viruses and how both bats and humans benefit from bat conservation.
Rachel Page, staff scientist and director of STRI’s Bat Lab in Gamboa, Panama, discusses the ecology and behavior of the tropical bats she and her team study, and the evolution of their immune systems, which make them reservoirs for pathogens like coronaviruses. Although bats are widely misunderstood animals, they are critical to keeping ecosystems healthy—as pollinators, seed dispersers and because they eat insect pests—and they display high levels of intelligence. These stories of animal behavior studies will underscore why basic, curiosity-driven research like this is so important.
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