Search for: All records

As human activities continue to negatively affect bat populations, bat conservation efforts continue to rely on questionnaires to understand human actions toward bats; however, the use of questionnaires constrains understanding by limiting the sample size to those who choose to participate, being subject to selection bias, and overall may not be the most efficient way of understanding sentiments and behaviors toward bats. We used social media to analyze sentiment toward bat exploitation behaviors in Asia and evaluated the influence that these posts have on users in the region. We gathered and analyzed a total of 458 social media posts and 2,427 comments throughout Asia utilizing keywords and hashtags in 16 languages. We found that nearly 90% of initial posts discussing bat exploitations were discussed in an acceptive, pro-bat exploitation way. Initial posts from Southeast and South Asia showed acceptance of bat exploitation. Comments on posts from Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia, were acceptive of bat exploitation for food and medicine, whereas comments on posts from South Asia were rejective of bat exploitation, in contrast, with the initial South Asian posts, which were more acceptive of persecution of bats. We recommend using social media platforms to promote messages that reject bat exploitation and encourage bat conservation efforts as our results indicate that positive messages receive mostly positive comments, reinforcing the importance of protecting bats. Moreover, we suggest future work be conducted using social media to further understand region-specific narratives for and against bat exploitation. 

Logging and forest conversion are occurring at alarming rates in tropical forests. These disturbances alter soil microbial community structure and functions. While direct links between changes in soil properties, such as pH and microbial community structure are well established, the indirect effects of logging and forest conversion on soil microbial community structure and functions are poorly understood. We used a space-for-time substitution to investigate the changes in soil microbial diversity and functions across a forest recovery gradient in the tropical montane forests of northern Borneo. We used surface (top 5 cm) soil to assess soil physicochemical and microbial (next-generation DNA sequencing) properties, and standardized litterbags (Tea Bag Index) to assess litter decomposition and stabilization. Our results show that bacterial and fungal diversity increases with recovery time and reaches pre-disturbance levels between 60- and 80-years post-disturbance. Litter decomposition rate constants increased linearly with increasing bacterial and fungal diversity. Litter stabilization also increased linearly with fungal diversity, but was highest at intermediate levels of bacterial diversity. Our results provide insights on the effects of forest logging and conversion on soils and highlight the tight coupling between soil microbial diversity and soil functions in tropical montane forests.