Experience Reflection: Alexis Flores
“Thanks to this award from Field Inclusive, we now have 15 Wildlife Acoustics bat monitors deployed across the Bay Area to identify bat species. This award was used specifically to purchase monitor accessories, field work travel costs, and travel to the 2025 International Urban Wildlife Conference.”
BY ALEXIS FLORES
As the sun began to set and the large stadium lights turned on, I looked up from the soccer ball to see swarms of insects gathering around the lights. Another flying organism joined the swarm and I wondered what it was – a bat! From then on, during every night’s soccer practice, I would look up to try to catch a glimpse of just how beautiful this human-bat coexistence was. Playing soccer for 18 years, throughout high school and college, I was so inspired by the interconnectedness and dependence of us (the humans) and these bats; the stadium lights on the field providing an environment for games and practice while also serving as fuel for these bats to forage as they navigated the night sky. This phenomenon, which I would later learn as a vital ecosystem service they provide, would shape my educational pursuits in public health and ecology and become one of the main focuses of my dissertation and Ph.D. work.
After completing an undergraduate degree in biology, and master’s degree in public health, I knew I wanted to continue investigating the connections between animals, people, and the environment. This all came together perfectly when I found the current lab, the Schell Lab at U.C. Berkeley allows me to marry my love for bats and their ecosystem functions with the public health, human aspect of their ecologies. My research now looks at the social-ecological patterns of urban bat diversity and distribution across the Bay Area using non-invasive bioacousticsurveys. This field work can look different day to day, either setting up a monitor in someone’s backyard or hiking through a restored redwood forest to find the perfect spot to set up a monitor. With this social-ecological lens of understanding bat ecology, I am able to connect things like
light pollution, noise pollution, and impervious surface cover/how green a neighborhood is with the total number of bat species identified at each site. Thanks to this award from Field Inclusive, we now have 15 Wildlife Acoustics bat monitors deployed across the Bay Area to identify bat species. This award was used specifically to purchase monitor accessories, field work travel costs, and travel to the 2025 International Urban Wildlife Conference.
As a queer Latina, equity and justice are core parts of my identity and when it comes to survey different neighborhoods, I understand not everyone has access to a backyard or secure space to have a monitor. We have had to get creative with our surveying techniques because it is crucial to be able to have a full picture of where bats are and in turn who gets to benefit from the services they provide. The image below shows first what the typical monitor deployment looks like followed by unconventional deployments for people who live in apartments and do not have access to backyards. Being able to continue surveys despite housing and location is again, crucial for investigating bats in cities. Our results will contribute to the sciences of general bat ecology, non-invasive acoustic surveys, and social-ecological patterns of urban bats and the ecosystem services they provide.
