RCN SEABCRU: The Southeast Asian Bat Conservation Research Unit

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Southeast Asia is one of the most biologically diverse regions in the world, and supports about 30% of the world's bat fauna. Bats perform critical ecosystem services as seed dispersers, pollinators and agents of pest control, but rapid land-use change and unregulated hunting imperil many of the region's species. Only 18% are considered to have stable populations and 20% of species are likely to be globally extinct by the end of this century. Moreover, bats are the natural reservoirs of numerous viruses, but there is growing consensus that it is human-induced environmental disturbances that precipitate the emergence of infectious diseases. Accurate documentation of the distribution, diversity and abundance of bat species in Southeast Asia and the responses of bats to anthropogenic activities is thus urgently needed. The goal of the South East Asian Bat Conservation Research Unit (SEABCRU) RCN is to create a network of international researchers to collate and generate these data through the implementation of research activities centered on four priority areas identified by consensus at a forum in 2007: flying fox distributions and population ecology; taxonomy and systematics; cave bat diversity and conservation; and response of forest-dependent bats to landscape change. The network will develop standardized research protocols for each priority and train Southeast Asian bat researchers in the protocols through a series of workshops. An online community of practice will be established to facilitate and promote communication among researchers to collate, synthesize, and share resulting data, and to promote effective international communication and stimulate collaboration.The SEABCRU RCN will bring together researchers from across SE Asia, the US and UK with university, museum and NGO affiliations. The research priorities will be supported by student teams that include those from 2-year colleges, four-year colleges, and graduate institutions, and combine US and SE Asian students. The project will generate unique datasets on the diversity, distribution, abundance and systematics of Southeast Asian bats critical for conservation intervention and that can greatly advance our understanding of biogeographic process, community ecology, and the ecological stressors that promote the emergence of infectious diseases in bats.