We are currently living an unprecedented climate crisis associated with pollution and species extinction. Politics should be more involved in finding solutions. But because change cannot wait, every one of us should already think about which changes are possible to adopt a lifestyle that is more respectful to our environment and planet.
Here is a little list that will hopefully inspire you:
BANK:
- Switch to a bank that support social and ecological projects! Banks are often accomplices of bad business like coal power plants or weapon business without you knowing it.
INTERNET:
- Switch search engine (e.g. Ecosia that use a part of the money from advertisement to plant trees)
- Delete old e-mails that consume uselessly place and energy from internet servers
- Sign online petitions (e.g. from Greenpeace).
- Change e-mail adress for an adress that is more environmentally friendly than Google.
I have now a new e-mail - Lilo- that respects privacy, reduce my carbon impact and finances social and environmental projetcs
ENERGY:
- Switch the light off when you are not in the room.
- Only use the heating when you need it. For example we heat the kitchen and living room during the day, the bath only when we use it and we do not heat the bedroom.
- Switch to an electricity provider that gets its energy from dams or wind energy (not coal or nuclear plants).
- Switch your Internet Box when you sleep to reduce useless energy consumption and wave emission.
TRANSPORTATION
- Use the bike as much as possible for short distances.
- For longer distances, use the train when it is possible.
- When you have not other choices than the plane, you can calculate your carbon emission and compensate it by supporting projects, for example on the website carbonfootprint.com.
FOOD & COSMETICS:
- Buy bio/local/seasonal/fairtrade when you can (the combination of all is of course ideal). We have started to get an "eco-box" on a weekly basis with a selection of local and bio vegetables + fruits.
- Reduce meat consumption and switch to a vegetarian/vegan diet to reduce carbon emissions.
- Bring a cloth bag to the shop when you buy bread/fruits/vegetables
- Go to a bulky shop with your bottles/bags to shop "zero waste" to buy all sorts of things (pasta, rice , flour, sugar, oil, tea).
- Buy a solid soap and shampoo to reduce the use of packaging
ITEMS:
- Repair things! You can bring your broken electronic devices to Repair cafés where you will be provided tools and guidance to repair your devices for the price of a donation of your choice.
- Give the clothes and books you do not use anymore to a charity.
- Give the old electronic devices you do not use anymore to recycle the precious materials
- Buy bio/local/fairtrade clothes when you can (the combination of all is of course ideal)
Yann

Have you ever heard about the Fairphone?

This smartphone is produced by a company alternative to all major phone companies. Its goal is to produce a model of smartphone with fair wages, recycled resources or resources extracted as far as possible in an ecological fashion.
I have recently acquired a Fairphone 2 New Life after trying to repair without success my previous smartphone (the screen of my Samsung galaxy Mini broke when I tried to change the audio plug-in). The phone was secondhand but newly checked by the company and warranted two years - for the price of 300€. A new phone will cost you 400€.

The Fairphone 2 works with Android and possesses similar functions as other smartphones. It also offers a dual SIM card. And another cool thing is that the phone offers modularity. You can order dysfunctional pieces online (e.g. microphone, camera, battery) and simply replace it with the help of online instructions (via the application Ifixit).

The delivery time was also really good - between one and two weeks. One curiosity is that no charging cable is provided. It is because the company wants to reduce electronic waste and the Fairphone has an adapter found in many other phones so it is very likely that you have the appropriate charging cable already home.

In summary, the Fairphone 2 constitutes a very good alternative to other smartphones available on the market with the advantage that it is fair and ecological with the possibility to easily repair it. If you are thinking of renewing your dying smartphones, give a try to the Fairphone :).

https://www.fairphone.com/en/

A lot of things have happened since my last blogpost. First of all, I am now officially a doctor since my defense in April 2016 at the University of Konstanz (Germany). My PhD thesis 'Causes and consequences of sociality in a neotropical bat' includes four chapters. With the help of many collaborators, I managed to publish two of these chapters in 2016:

1. The first one 'Group size, survival and surprisingly short lifespan in socially foraging bats' was published in BMC ecology.
Overview of the publication: To test if and how social group size affects survival in bats, we studied Pallas’s mastiff bat Molossus molossus (Pallas, 1766), a species that forms stable social groups that roost and forage together. Based on recaptures from 14 mixed-sex groups of thespecies in Panama, we found relatively small and intermediate, but stable groups, with a mean size of 9.6 ± 6.7 adults and juveniles. Strong selection towards small group size may result from psychoacoustic and cognitive constraints related to acoustic interference in social foraging and the complexity of coordinated flight. The short lifespans were unexpected and may result from life at the energetic edge due to a highly specialized diet. Median survival of females was very short with 1.8 years and a maximum estimated longevity of 5.6 years. Contrary to our expectations, we found no relationship between variation in group size and survival, a result similar to few other studies. The absence of a relationship between group size and survival may reflect a similar but optimized survival within the selected range of group sizes. We expect the pattern of small group sizes will be consistent in future research on species dependent on social information transfer about ephemeral resources.

2. The second one 'The value of molecular vs. morphometric and acoustic information for species identification using sympatric molossid bats' was published in Plos One. A press release of the publication is available in german on the website of the IZW Berlin.
Overview of the publication: A fundamental condition for any work with free-ranging animals is correct species identification. However, in case of bats, information on local species assemblies is frequently limited especially in regions with high biodiversity such as the Neotropics. The bat genus Molossus is a typical example of this, with morphologically similar species often occurring in sympatry. We used a multi-method approach based on molecular, morphometric and acoustic information collected from 962 individuals of Molossus bondae, M. coibensis, and M. molossus captured in Panama. We distinguished M. bondae based on size and pelage coloration. We identified two robust species clusters composed of M. molossus and M. coibensis based on 18 microsatellite markers but also on a more stringently determined set of four markers. Phylogenetic reconstructions using the mitochondrial gene co1 (DNA barcode) were used to diagnose these microsatellite clusters as M. molossus and M. coibensis. To differentiate species, morphological information was only reliable when forearm length and body mass were combined in a linear discriminant function (95.9% correctly identified individuals). When looking in more detail at M. molossus and M. coibensis, only four out of 13 wing parameters were informative for species differentiation, with M. coibensis showing lower values for hand wing area and hand wing length and higher values for wing loading. Acoustic recordings after release required categorization of calls into types, yielding only two informative subsets: approach calls and two-toned search calls. Our data emphasizes the importance of combining morphological traits and independent genetic data to inform the best choice and combination of discriminatory information used in the field. Because parameters can vary geographically, the multi-method approach may need to be adjusted to local species assemblies and populations to be entirely informative.

Some fresh news from southern Germany! After the lab session in London to retrieve genetic data, I spent most of my time analyzing survival data and writing my first manuscript. The manuscript - first chapter of my thesis - is approaching its final version and I expect it to be ready for submission by the end of this year or early next year ...

I have already presented most of the results of this manuscript at the European Research Symposium bats held in Croatia from 1 to 5 September. My next talk will be held Dec. 15 at my old institute, the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences, in Montpellier. I will present some results of survival analysis and also new results about foraging efficiency, based on the automatic scales installed at the entrance of the roosts of my social groups of Molossus molossus...

Back to Panama, for the fifth fieldwork season of data collection of my PhD. I have three determined goals for this session : (i) collecting survival data, (ii) collecting DNA samples and (iii) manipulating group size. This is the third consecutive season where I am catching a network of a dozen roosts where I can determine group size.

During captures, animals are marked individually with transponders. With relevant statistical analyses, I will try and estimate survival based on recapture rates and detection probabilities. My species foraging in groups, group size probably has an effect on individual survival, that’s what we are trying to determine with these analyses.

In parallel, I am collecting wing biopsies. These DNA samples will be genotyped to obtain microsatellites. They will be used to study relatedness of individuals within groups. I am especially interested in male reproductive success in function to group size. I assume it will be more difficult for the dominant male to insure paternity in groups with more females.

And the main goal of this mission is to study the foraging efficiency (weight gain relative to time spent out of roost) in function to group size. Several roosts studied are equipped with automated systems with automated transponder reader and integrated scale. To investigate the effect of group size, I am comparing foraging efficiency for a group of normal size and of modified size. To modify group size, I capture individuals of the group that I keep for several days in captivity. Captive individuals are fed each night with mealworms and released within few days. I have already manipulated three groups, a fourth is ongoing and a fifth will come in the days to come. I have now collected a lot of data, in parallel I am now working on the analyses.

As announced in a previous post, I prepared a poster about my PhD project for the evaluation of my doctoral school. And the poster is available to download !

I was also in France a few days, namely at the Museum of Natural History of Paris. I had the chance to present my work during the "café scienti" - a talk session that takes place every monday. I presented new graphs about the activity patterns of my bats.

My next stay to Panama is coming soon, I am back to the village of Gamboa in a month !
Meanwhile I am focusing on data analysis - especially survival and foraging activity and efficiency of my bats.

Yann

This video has been made with a drone, owned by a colleague from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the institute with which I collaborate in Panama. This is basically an aerial discovery of my fieldwork site. My bat model species roost in the houses of this village - all the data from my PhD is coming from there...Enjoy!

Back to Germany for a little while. I am back to my survival analyses using the mark-recapture data of my bats.
A lot of programming is required to shape the data the way I want.

For the end of the month, I have to finish the preparation of a poster for the evaluation of my doctoral school.
I will update it on the website when ready!

And always as a parallel task, I am taking care of the logistics for fieldwork,
by wrapping up last season (finance report) and preparing the season to come (travel preparation, material order).
Back to the field November and December!

Good news for this beginning of the scholar year, the paper about project I was involved in during my master has been published! In a few words, we studied the second biggest genus of Mammals - the bat genus Myotis - to learn about their evolutionary history. We used DNA and models to learn the "genealogic tree" of these bats and estimate their biogeographic origins. 

I stayed a short month in Panama this summer – from mid-July to mid-August. The priority was to catch all the colonies we work on – more than 20 nights of catching for a total of around 300 bats. Many new bats have been transpondered and I have collected a lot of DNA (relatedness analysis) and feces samples (virus and diet studies). The highlight of the stay was the catch of 96 bats in one night. The catch started at 6PM and we finished processing the bats around 6AM.I had a small army of people from the batlab to help me – thanks to Teague, Basti, Julia, Sebas, Michelle, Toni, Santi, Dallas…

Unfortunately, three of the roosts with automated monitoring systems were abandoned (probably due to house renovation) but we installed two other automated monitoring systems. I also had the opportunity to present my PhD project to the scientific community – good practice with a lot of interesting questions.

In addition, I helped Sebas for a parallel project. As a pilot study for his master thesis, we equipped these bats with heart-rate and temperature transmitters. The bats were kept in captivity and video-taped. This preliminary data will help understanding the relationship between heart-rate, temperate and clustering prevalence. My fieldwork season is over but Sebas will stay until early September to operate more trials and continue this project in November-December, when we both go back for a new fieldwork season.

I am in the starting-blocks for a new fieldwork season in Panama. I will fly to Panama mid-July and stay until mid-August. My goal for this season is to catch all the colonies already surveyed in the previous fieldwork seasons - especially to collect DNA samples and equip non-marked bat with a subcutaneous transponder. This transponder can be scanned either manually (hand-held transponder reader) or automatically (automated transponder reader at roost entrance). This method is very useful to obtain data on dispersal, group composition and also survival.

A german Master student will help me for the catching and removal of bats from the nets. In parallel, this assistant will conduct some captivity experiments for his master's thesis. His project will focus on heart-rate and temperature to better understand metabolic rates of tropical animals.

This should be the last but one fieldwork season of my PhD, the last one being planned in November-December. I will then have one year and a half to go in the lab for my DNA samples, analyse the collected data and write my PhD thesis.