If looking at this picture you think that Terence is moonlighting at another job, possibly at a lab, then you are forgiven. In fact this is our office and Terence is looking at slides of insects retrieved from recently laid insect traps around the roosts occupied by the endangered Seychelles sheath-tailed bat. The traps were set up to collect insects within foraging and non foraging areas of the bat in order to help us study insect density and diversity.
Terence is counting and grouping insects into families. The study is part of Nature Seychelles’ monitoring of the remaining roosts – with 32 individuals – of the Seychelles sheath-tailed bat on Mahe. Apart from keeping a tally of the numbers at the roosts on Mahe, Nature Seychelles’ is keen to uncover information about food abundance. The bat is insectivorous and a past project had identified food shortages as a possible reason for the decline in numbers. Although the study doesn’t pin point exactly what the bat eats, it helps to show what is present around the roosts.
The malaise traps were laid in the beach and woodland areas but with similar vegetation. Ian, setting up the trap here, is one of the Nature Seychelles team working on the project. We will be sharing more information on the progress of study.
