Hana Petersen attends Southern African Bat Research Conference 2017
On Friday 6 October 2017, Plant Conservation Unit Masters student, Hana Petersen, delved into her ‘dark past’, presenting her research on a bat species at the Southern African Bat Research Conference (SABRC 2017), held at Kirstenbosch Gardens last week.
Hana’s presentation titled, “A first glance at the social vocal and behavioural repertoire of Geoffroy's horseshoe bat, Rhinolophus clivosus”, detailed the findings of her Honours thesis looking at the social calls of R. clivosus in captivity. This research, coupled with MSc research by Nikita Finger, and supervised by A/Prof. David Jacobs and Anna Bastian of the SARChI Animal Evolution and Systematics Group at the University of Cape Town (UCT), provides the first qualitative and quantitative data regarding the repertoire of behaviours and vocalisations produced by R. clivosus. Basic behavioural data such as produced by this study could facilitate the design of experiments that will allow further insight into the social organisation of bats and the importance of vocal communication in nocturnal, group-living animals. Hana and co-author Nikita hope to publish their findings early next year.
Below are a few photographs of SABRC 2017.
Left: Hana begins her presentation. Right: Hana outlining the research objectives.
Left: Hana explaining context-specificity. Right: Members of UCT's Animal Evolution & Systematics Lab (left to right): Hana Petersen, Nikita Finger, Sydney Moyo, Tinyiko Maluleke, Anna Bastian, David Jacobs, Tshifhiwa Netshongolwe and David Wechuli.
~ Article and photographs supplied by Hana Petersen