JP / EN

The Ryukyu tube-nosed bat and Yanbaru whiskered bat are two endangered bats that only exist in the remaining forests of three islands in the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan. However, we don't know enough about these bats to design conservation strategies for them. I will extract and analyze the DNA from 50 previously collected bat poop samples from Okinawa. The DNA will tell us what the bats are eating, which in turn will tell us where they are eating, and therefore where to protect.