Bat Island

Featuring incredible photography and insight from an international team with long-term ties to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Bat Island spotlights the unique beauty and environmental importance of the seventy-six species of bats on Panama’s Barro Colorado Island.

For decades, scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute have studied the remarkable biodiversity of bats on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, where an astonishing seventy-six species coexist. Now, for the first time, Smithsonian scientists’ expertise pairs with the stunning photography of National Geographic contributor Christian Ziegler for a captivating visual journey into the fascinating world of these elusive night creatures.

Bats are unique among mammals: they have acquired true flight, provide essential ecosystem services, and represent the ecologically most diverse group of mammals worldwide. Synthesizing decades-worth of intensive study, Drs. Rachel Page, Dina Dechmann, Teague O’Mara, and Marco Tschapka provide authoritative insight alongside 150 photographs that showcase bats’ extraordinary environmental adaptations and rich natural history.

OVER 150 STUNNING PHOTOGRAPHS: National Geographic photographer and contributor Christian Ziegler has captured over a decade’s worth of images of the myriad of bat species living on Barro Colorado Island that capture these elusive animals in a variety of settings, from night shots of flight through the tropical rainforest to closeups of their remarkable wings and feeding patterns.

WRITTEN BY SMITHSONIAN SCIENTISTS: All chapters of Bat Island are written by scientists long affiliated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, one of the world’s leading tropical research organizations that spans a century. Topics include bats’ diverse sensory abilities, foraging strategies, roosting ecologies, and social systems.

DECADES OF CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH: Bat Island, published in partnership with the Smithsonian, presents fascinating insights from scientists working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, which boasts decades of study of the hyperdiverse bat population on Barro Colorado Island in addition to the most comprehensive and long-term datasets on tropical bats.

CALL FOR CONSERVATION: Drs. Page, Dechmann, O’Mara, and Tschapka highlight how bats are threatened by habit fragmentation and land degradation, and communicate the initiatives needed to ensure the survival of these animals, which are critical to maintaining healthy, balanced ecosystems.

RARE BEAUTY: Award-winning photojournalist Christian Ziegler’s photography illuminates the unique beauty and allure of bats and the tropical rainforest in Panama.

Christian Ziegler (www.christianziegler.photography) is a German photojournalist specializing in natural history and science, with a focus on tropical ecosystems. Ziegler currently works for the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, and is a regular contributor to National Geographic. His work has been awarded numerous prizes in the competitions for Wildlife Photographer of the Year, European Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and the North American Nature Photography Association. A tropical ecologist by training, Ziegler has been associated with STRI for over twenty-five years since he started his own graduate research on Barro Colorado Island. He has since worked in tropical rainforests on four continents. Ziegler’s aim is to highlight species and ecosystems under threat and to share their beauty and importance with the world. Ziegler splits his time between his homes on the edge of a rainforest national park in central Panama and in southern Germany, from where he starts his adventures around the world.

Dr. Rachel A. Page is a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, where she leads the Smithsonian Bat Lab (www.noseleaf.org). She is broadly interested in animal behavior, but her focus is understanding the sensory and cognitive tools bats use to navigate their worlds and interact with each other. After completing a BA at Columbia University and a PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, Page conducted postdoctoral research as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany. Page has studied bats on Barro Colorado Island and the surrounding areas for over two decades. She has a passion for understanding rich, tropical ecosystems and the myriad species interactions they encompass. In addition to conducting her own research, Page mentors a large group of students. Page lives at the edge of the rainforest in Gamboa, Panama.

Dr. Dina K.N. Dechmann is a group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (www.ab.mpg.de/dechmann) and a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. An evolutionary ecologist by training, her main research interest is how animals adapt to fluctuations in the resources upon which they depend. She is fascinated by how tiny mammals with fast metabolisms, such as bats and shrews, adapt their morphology, physiology, and behavior to deal with the bottlenecks created by changes in the food landscape. She works in ecosystems across the world, but since her first visit to BCI in 2000, she has been struck by the diversity of the tropical bat community, which remains a cornerstone of her research. She received her master’s degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich followed by a PhD at the University of Zurich, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin. Since she was hired by Max Planck in 2009, she has had the good fortune to supervise a group of brilliant young minds, several of whom now run their own projects in Panama. Dechmann lives in the medieval town of Stein am Rhein in Switzerland.

Dr. M. Teague O’Mara is the Director of Conservation Evidence at Bat Conservation International, where he works on data-driven strategies for the conservation of global bat populations. O’Mara has studied animal behavior, movement, and physiology across the globe, with an emphasis on bats in Panama. He is a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, and an adjunct professor at Southeastern Louisiana University. He received his PhD from Arizona State University studying lemur development and social behavior, and then switched to research with bats during postdoctoral work at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the University of Konstanz, and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany. He lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Dr. Marco Tschapka is a professor at the University of Ulm in Germany and a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. His research addresses bat-plant interactions, with a focus on the ecology of Neotropical nectar-feeding bats, their adaptations to nectarivory, and the plants they visit and pollinate. Tschapka received his master’s degree and PhD with Dr. Otto von Helversen at the University of Erlangen, Germany, on Neotropical flower-visiting bats. Together with his collaborators and students, he has worked on bat projects across Latin America, including in Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Panama. He lives in Ulm, Germany.

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City, Panama, is a unit of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., USA. The institute furthers the understanding of tropical biodiversity and its importance to human welfare, trains students to conduct research in the tropics, and promotes conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems and their cultures.