Hunting for Flowers with a Shaman
The following morning, the four of us hiked along the nearby Rio Leon valley’s steep cliffs searching for the cactus Vinicio had found flowering earlier in the week. We were extremely disappointed to find the flowering was perhaps finished or close to it. Merlin and National Geographic almost decided to postpone the trip for another […]
Bat Conservationist in Ecuador: Nery Chamorro Rodas
We’d like you to meet Nery Fabian Chamorro Rodas, a very special friend of ours in the world of bat conservation and an invaluable member of our team here in Ecuador. Merlin and I met Nery about three years ago at a bat workshop in Paraguay held at the remote Los Tres Gigantes field […]
Back Story for BAT ECHO
The National Geographic Society BAT ECHO team is reunited, Ralph Simon having arrived in Ecuador a week after Merlin and me. At the University of Erlangen and the University of Ulm-Germany, Ralph has done his doctoral research on how plants have evolved special structures to guide echo-locating bats to their flowers. We met him at […]
Ecuador
Half of the National Geographic team “Project Bat Echo” is on the road again, after only a month home from Cuba where we worked for the month of March, resulting in over 6,000 photographs. With barely time to unpack and repack, we left Austin with our more than 350 lbs. of equipment. Last night we […]