Philippines RPCV Jake Esselstyn nets a new fruit bat species



In the past three years, Esselstyn has made six trips to the Philippines to collect specimens. The island country already was familiar to him because he had served as a Peace Corps volunteer there from 1998 to 2001, doing biodiversity and inventory. He said little is known about the flora and fauna on the island, so finding a new mammal species is "not as uncommon as you might believe." Esselstyn said the researchers set up nets on farms, in forests and over streams to catch the bats while they were flying. Sometimes, they sought out the bats in caves. "They get tangled up in the nets and getting them out is time-consuming," he said. The researchers have caught as many as a thousand bats in one night, he said. "There are 75 to 80 (known) species of bats in the Philippines," he said. "Some are common and then there's others that are rare."

Philippines RPCV Jake Esselstyn nets a new fruit bat species

KU grad student nets a new fruit bat species

By Jan Biles

The Capital-Journal

Published Sunday, October 07, 2007

LAWRENCE — University of Kansas graduate student Jake Esselstyn was collecting bat species in 2006 with a research team in the forests of the Philippines when a guide told him about an unusual fruit bat he'd seen.

The man described a bat with orange fur, white stripes on its face and a black beard on its throat. Its facial features resembled that of a fox, and its wing span was about two feet.

"I didn't believe his description. I thought he was a prankster," Esselstyn, 33, said. "And then a few days later we caught one."

Although the "flying fox" bat had been known to Filipinos and bat hunters for a long time, he said, a specimen had never been captured.

Esselstyn said the Filipino government announced the discovery of the bat and "word spread." Since then, he has been interviewed by National Geographic and other media and his story has appeared online at Yahoo! News.

"It's a nice example of how little we know about the animals in the world," he said.

Esselstyn, who grew up in Oregon, moved to Lawrence in the fall of 2004 to work on his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology. His dissertation, he said, explores "genetic variations across geography."

In the past three years, Esselstyn has made six trips to the Philippines to collect specimens. The island country already was familiar to him because he had served as a Peace Corps volunteer there from 1998 to 2001, doing biodiversity and inventory.

He said little is known about the flora and fauna on the island, so finding a new mammal species is "not as uncommon as you might believe."

Esselstyn said the researchers set up nets on farms, in forests and over streams to catch the bats while they were flying. Sometimes, they sought out the bats in caves.

"They get tangled up in the nets and getting them out is time-consuming," he said.

The researchers have caught as many as a thousand bats in one night, he said.

"There are 75 to 80 (known) species of bats in the Philippines," he said. "Some are common and then there's others that are rare."

The researchers determine which bats they want to euthanize and export to KU to study. Once the animals are at KU, he cleans some of the skulls and skeletons and preserves some of the bat bodies in jars filled with a preservative. The specimens are then catalogued in order to secure the data.

"I'm interested in how animals diversify, colonize a new area and evolve into a new species," he said.

When the KU researchers are done studying the specimens, one-half is sent to the Philippine National Museum in Manila; the other half remains in the collection at KU's Natural History Museum.

Esselstyn said the "flying fox" fruit bat is "the flagship species for conservation in the Philippines" because its appearance is so appealing it has the potential to change the way people think about bats.

On the island, many legends about bats flourish, he said. A popular legend involves a half-man who has wings and enters people's homes to drink their blood and steal their bodies.

"It's difficult for one species to overcome that legend," he said, "but if we give the government a reason to protect a patch of forest it's found in, that's great."

Esselstyn's research is supported by small grants from the KU Natural History Museum Endowment Fund, American Philosophical Society, Society of Systematic Biologists, American Society of Mammalogists and National Science Foundation.

Esselstyn and a herpetology student from KU returned to the Philippines earlier this month. At some point, he hopes to collect samples from Malaysia.

Eventually, Esselstyn would like to work as a curator at a university-based museum.

Jan Biles can be reached at (785) 295-1292 or jan.biles@cjonline.com.

Links to Related Topics (Tags):

Headlines: October, 2007; Peace Corps Philippines; Directory of Philippines RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Philippines RPCVs; Science; Biology; Kansas

When this story was posted in November 2007, this was on the front page of PCOL:




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