 Hello everyone, welcome to Session 7, Transition of Wild Animals to Captive Settings and Housing Challenges. My name is Elaine Kim and I am the Senior Eye Cook Coordinator at Colorado State University and I will be your moderator for this session. The following people will be speaking to you during this session. They are as follows, Dr. Elaine Lacy at University of California Berkeley, Dr. Michael Romero at Tufts University and Dr. Michael Smotherman at Texas A&M University. Each of these speakers will share their experiences using wildlife in the field or in the laboratory or both and they will share the challenges they encountered with their animal-carrying use committees and they will also share how they navigated those situations to move forward with their research and their teaching objectives. Hello everyone, thanks for choosing to attend the Ilar Wildlife Workshop. Today I'll be talking to you about establishing captive populations of wild animals in a research setting. I'll share with you some of my experiences as both a researcher and an Eye Cook member and I'll offer several suggestions as to how to make the process of establishing such populations more efficient and more successful. As a biologist, I recognize that integrating field and laboratory studies of the same species can be invaluable and can lead to research outcomes that can't be achieved in either setting alone. For example, field studies offer the benefit of studying organisms in their natural environments, that is, in the adaptive settings in which they have evolved. But field studies often suffer from a lack of control, meaning field biologists often have little control over which individuals are available for study and how those individuals interact with their environments. In contrast, laboratory studies are almost necessarily conducted in artificial environments that may impact the data obtained. Laboratory studies benefit, however, in that they typically offer much greater ease of controlled experimental manipulation of the type required to demonstrate causality between different variables. Of a clear complementarity of field and laboratory studies, suggests that researchers should attempt to integrate these two settings whenever possible. But unfortunately, for many of the natural systems that field biologists study, this just isn't a practical possibility. For those species that can be studied in both the field and the lab, such as the naked mole rats shown here, the benefits of this integrated approach can be substantial. For example, observations in the field can inform the design of controlled experiments conducted in the lab. Outcomes in the lab can then in turn be used to improve understanding of what these organisms are doing in their natural environments. Collectively, these benefits suggest that, when possible, field biologists may gain by bringing their study species into captivity. But this is challenging, beginning with it may be necessary to determine how the biological requirements of an exotic species are best met in captivity. This may require experimentation or trial and error learning regarding best practices for housing, husbandry, and veterinary care. It's also likely that bringing exotics into captivity will have regulatory implications. It seems reasonable to expect that exotic species will require more exceptions to the guide, and it's almost a given that housing exotics will require approval of new procedures, meaning procedures that are not familiar to your IOCUC. Well, all of this serves to create an extra regulatory burden for biologists attempting to establish captive populations of exotic species. Now, this extra burden includes, but is not limited to, potential resistance from your IOCUC, if the IOCUC is unwilling to step beyond the known, the comfortable, to explore new options for housing or husbandry. It often also requires that researchers take on an extra burden of demonstrating the efficacy of specific housing or husbandry practices. So again, the collective effect here is to place an additional regulatory burden on those of us attempting to house exotics in captivity. So how can those of us interested in establishing captive populations of exotics begin to address this regulatory burden? More specifically, how can we begin to work within the current set of constraints to ensure that we're moving efficiently, effectively, and successfully toward our research goals? Well, I'll assert that communication is the key, in particular communication with the IOCUC and with the AV. Now over my years as a researcher and an IOCUC member, I've observed that this communication often falls into one of two general patterns. The first of these is what I've termed converting intuition into information. Many field biologists are the experts on the animals that they study. As a result, they have a very good understanding of what those animals need in a captive setting. But field biologists are often much less prepared to convert that understanding into information, specifically data, that the IOCUC can use when evaluating procedures and attempting to approve protocols. The second general form of communication that I've observed is what I termed turning doubts into data. This is aimed a bit more at responding to questions or concerns that arise from the IOCUC and that must be addressed, again, with quantitative information for the IOCUC to proceed with protocol approval. I'll present an example that touches on both of these forms of communication in a few moments, an example drawn from my own research. More generally, I'm suggesting that biologists interested in establishing captive populations of exotic species need to be prepared to collect and share data on the efficacy of proposed practices. In other words, they need to be prepared to gather information and share information in a way that is not required of biologists studying more traditional lab animal models. Well, let's explore these ideas in a bit more depth now, using examples drawn from my research program, the focus of which is this animal, the colonial tucotuco. This is a group living subterranean species of rodent in the South American genus, Timonius. To give you just a taste of the natural history of the colonial tucotuco, these animals are endemic to a roughly 1500 square kilometer area in southwestern Argentina, all of which is contained within Parque Nacional Malwapi. What drew me to these animals was more anecdotal reports regarding their behavior. The dogma has long been that tucotucos are solitary, meaning that each adult occupies its own burrow system. In contrast, early anecdotal reports suggested that the colonial tucotuco is social, meaning that multiple adults live together and share the same burrow system. I made my first trip to Argentina in 1991, and during that visit established a study site on the western banks of the Rio de Mai at the point indicated by the black circle on the map. I have maintained an ongoing annual program of field research ever since. Our annual efforts in the field consist of an extensive mark recapture program coupled with intensive radio telemetry. Some of you may recognize my field assistant in the photo on the lower left. It's Elaine Kim, one of the organizers of this workshop. By combining these data, we can gather robust information regarding spatial relationships among known individuals in our study population, from which we can draw inferences regarding social relationships. But, given that these animals are subterranean and spend the vast majority of their time underground, there are marked constraints on how much of their behavior we can observe in a field setting. It was these constraints, specifically the inability to observe the animals directly in the field that led me to establish a captive population of colonial tucatucos on the Berkeley campus in 1996. Now, this is the only place that this species is housed in captivity, and you can see here get a snapshot of how we have attempted to recreate a burrow system environment in the lab. As I alluded to a few moments ago, there have been challenges. Because this species had not previously been housed in captivity, we had to start from scratch to develop appropriate procedures for housing the animals, for providing them with a sustainable captive diet, and we had to work with Berkeley veterinarians to address the specific health needs of this species, such as appropriate maintenance of the cheek teeth. Although there have been challenges, overall the program has been very successful, and the population has grown from an initial 12 animals to now more than 150, with regular reproduction occurring every year in the lab. So how did we do it? In other words, what suggestions for success can I offer based on my experiences establishing a captive population of colonial tucatucos? Well, this brings us back to the forms of communication that I outlined a few minutes ago, at multiple points during my work with captive tucatucos, it's been necessary to convert my intuitive understanding of these animals into information that my Iocook could use and evaluate. It's also been necessary at multiple points to turn doubts raised by the Iocook into data that again that entity can use to evaluate proposed practices and procedures. As an example, I offer our efforts to develop an appropriate lighting regime for colonial tucatucos housed in captivity. Now, if you and I were to go to the field to look for colonial tucatucos, this is what we would typically see. But remember, these animals are subterranean, and thus individuals spend the majority of their time underground in dark burrows, and thus this is the lighting environment that they typically experience. In bringing these animals to the lab, one of the immediate conditions that I was given by my Iocook is that the tucatucos had to be housed under full illumination, such that any animal was visible at any moment in time. As you can see, this creates a very different lighting environment in the field versus in the lab. As someone familiar with these animals, this was a concern and resulted in a potential conflict between what seemed best to me given the biology of these animals and what my Iocook was willing to allow. Well, how did we resolve this? I took my expectation that the animals preferred to nest in less illuminated areas and used that to design a study to determine whether, if given a choice, captive colonial tucatucos preferred to nest in less versus more illuminated portions of their burrow systems. As you can see in this photo in the lab, the artificial burrow systems that we use consist of two clear plastic acrylic nest boxes that are connected by a series of clear plastic tunnels. The experiment consisted of decreasing the illumination in one nest box by constructing that box from red rather than clear plexiglass. Red was a compromise that reduced illumination in one nest box but allowed for ready visual detection of the animals. We created this contrast between red and clear nest boxes for six artificial burrow systems and then we simply recorded where the animals were nesting several times per day for a series of several weeks. Well, the results of the study are shown here. Across the x-axis are the six burrow systems that were monitored. Along the y-axis is the percentage of scans or observations during which all animals resident in the same burrow system were found together in the red versus the clear nest box. I think the outcome is pretty straightforward. There was a significant tendency for the animals to be found more often in the red nest box. So, surprise, captive colonial tucotucos preferred to spend time in less illuminated nest boxes. As a result of this study, we now have permission to use red nest boxes as part of the artificial burrow systems that we construct. Now this seems so simple, both the study that was undertaken and the finding that subterranean roes preferred less illuminated areas. But the critical point that I'm trying to make in the context of today's talk is that I needed to undertake the study. I needed to do the study so that I could convert my intuitive understanding of what tucotucos need into information and data that my IACUC could use to justify approval for non-standard housing. I'll suggest that researchers attempting to do the same, that is to establish captive populations of exotic species, need to be prepared to do this. They need to be prepared to do some extra work to demonstrate what's best for their animals. Now this strategy doesn't reduce the regulatory burden of housing exotics, that's a different set of solutions. But I'll suggest that if field biologists approach this situation with the expectation that data will be needed, then my experiences as both a researcher and an IACUC member tell me that the process of establishing captive populations will proceed more smoothly and more efficiently. As a final comment, I'll note that conducting studies such as the illumination experiment with tucotucos can offer some important educational and collaborative benefits. Many of these types of projects provide opportunities to engage students in basic research. It may also be possible to engage the animal care staff at your institution. Shown here in this photo are the six animal care techs at Berkeley who participated in the illumination study that I described. Through their participation, they learned about the scientific process, and they became engaged with the animals at a deeper level that has led to better animal care. So yes, establishing exotics and captivity may require some additional work, but you can turn that effort to your advantage and do more than just provide data to your IACUC. So to conclude, bringing exotic species into captivity is challenging. This involves challenges arising due to the biology of the animals themselves and also challenges arising due to a regulatory burden that does not occur when establishing populations of standard lab animal models. Well, in this talk, I've tried to suggest several strategies for increasing the efficiency of the process for establishing captive populations. Most of these suggestions have focused on effective communication with your IACUC, including approaching the process knowing that you'll likely need to collect data specifically for the purposes of validating what you think are the best captive conditions for your animals. And I think there are certainly times when we all need to step back in the course of the major benefit to doing all of this, namely better research and a much richer understanding of the organisms that we study. I thank you for your attention today. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you would like to discuss any of the ideas that I've presented in greater detail. Thank you. Hello, my name is Michael Romero and I'm a professor of biology at Tufts University. I have spent the last 30 years studying the vertebrate stress response in wildlife both in the field and in the laboratory. What I'd like to talk to you about today are various challenges that wildlife have in adjusting to captivity and how the IACUC might cope with those challenges. One important feature for bringing wild animals into captivity is that we are introducing those animals to a novel, stressful environment. So one question we need to ask is how do those animals adjust? A few years ago, a former graduate student and I published a review paper exploring how animals cope with the introduction to captivity. And one of the things we looked at was changes in body weight. And so in this graph that came from that review paper, you can see on the x-axis, the captivity duration. It's spanned from one to two days all the way out to a couple of weeks and a few months. On the y-axis, we see the percent of studies that reported changes in that body weight. And at the top of the graph, we can see the sample size in terms of the number of studies that studied body weight. And one of the things that you can see here is that the black bars represent the mass where the captive animals were below that of their wild congeners. The gray bars where the mass was the same as the wild animals and the white was the mass where it was above it. And one of the things you can see very clearly initially is a lot of studies that report a decrease in body weight. And this is probably not surprising because of the introduction to a very stressful captive environment. But over time, some of the animals acclimate so that there's a large number of animals that now have the same mass as they did prior to capture and a few even overcompensate. So between 10 and 15% of the studies report that the animals were heavier than they were in the wild. So the take home message is that species can both lose and gain weight when brought into captivity and may never recover. So this creates some challenges to the eye of cook because body weight is often one of the major ways in which we judge the health of an animal. And if an animal is heavier than it used to be, then there's a larger buffer in those animals before body weight loss creates a problem. And for the other species that have lost body weight, they can actually become in trouble much earlier than you would normally anticipate from changes in body weight. And so eye of cooks have to take this kind of feature into account but it's not always clear which species are going to show an increased decrease or stay the same when they're brought into captivity. Stress might be a mechanism that explains the changes in body weights shown in the previous slide. So in that same review paper, we looked at the changes in glucocorticoids as animals were introduced to captivity. And glucocorticoids are one of the primary stress hormones that vertebrates release in response to stress. So again, the white bars indicate that glucocorticoids are higher than their wild congeners. And we can see in the first few hours and the first few days up to the first week, the vast majority of studies report an increase in glucocorticoids. And again, this is probably not surprising as these animals are having to cope with this new stressful captive environment. The interesting thing happens though as time progresses. So all the way up to about six weeks, there's now more species that are showing no change and even a few where the glucocorticoids are going below what they were in the wild. But even at the six weeks to two months and three months, the majority of species are still showing an increase in glucocorticoid levels. So the take-home message from this is that most species show long-term changes in stress hormones. And this suggests that most species don't fully acclimate to captive conditions even over long periods of time. So the bottom line is that captive animals are physiologically different. They are different from domesticated individuals. They are different from their free-living congenerics. And they probably never completely adapt to captive conditions. So this creates challenges for Iocokes. One challenge for Iocokes is dealing with sample sizes. So one of the charges of an Iocoke is to reduce the number of animals. It's one of the three R's. But minimizing sample sizes is not always appropriate for studies on wild animals. For example, wild animals are often patchily distributed across their environment. And this means there's unpredictable trapping success. In many times, I've been out trapping and been completely unsuccessful for weeks and sometimes even months. And then all of a sudden 100, 200 animals will immediately come into the trap. And so these kinds of studies are very opportunistic. We might be able to complete five or 10 years of studies in just a few days where we couldn't trap the animals at all for another four or five years. And so trying to explain and get those sample sizes to the Iocokes is often very difficult. And bringing those animals into captivity is also of concern to a lot of the animal care facilities. Because capturing animals is not the same as ordering animals. If I want another batch of laboratory rodents, I can just call up and have them ordered and the care facility we know exactly when they're arriving. When I need to capture animals, I often have no idea how or how many the animals we brought in on a specific day. A second challenge with sample sizes is that more individuals is often better science. For example, a lot of ecologists are interested in understanding the survival rates of a species or the movement patterns or the reproductive outputs or the yearly patterns and all of these things. And each one of these, the data can be better with higher numbers of sample sizes. And so the idea is not necessarily to have as few as possible but actually have as many as possible. And the important thing here is that many wildlife studies are trying to quantify variation. Whereas most laboratory studies on laboratory animals are trying to control variation. And it's the difference between experiments that test hypotheses versus the describing of populations that often takes place with wildlife studies. And so coping with these different kinds of sample sizes is often a real challenge for eye-cooks. Bringing wild animals into captivity can create unanticipated housing challenges. For example, captive wild animals often are far more sensitive to housing conditions than domesticated laboratory species. Normal husbandry is often quite stressful to these animals that are unaccustomed to routine cage changes every couple of days. In addition, many species have requirements for live prey. A good example of this are fish that require live prey because dead prey do not provide the appropriate stimuli for successful foraging. So one of the questions we have asked in our eye-cook for a number of years are whether those prey fish are covered. On the one hand, they are vertebrate animals, but on the other, they are not experimental animals. We have never come up with a successful or satisfactory answer to this question. Finally, many animals exist in natural habitats that are quite dirty, and so that sterile clean environments are not necessarily the best for these animals. An example of this are the Xenopus frogs often used in developmental studies. They've been used for many years now, but their original habitat are dirty streams and muddy streams in Africa. So after all these years, the Xenopus that are currently held in laboratories have probably adapted to clean water conditions. But if we brought animals directly from the field, they would probably be far happier in a dirty or muddy environment. My own personal experience is in bringing wild birds into captivity. So I'd like to talk about some examples of bird-specific husbandry concerns as a model for bringing other taxa into captivity. One example is that many facilities use fluorescent lights, and fluorescent lights have a natural flicker rate, but birds have a higher visual acuity than most mammals, and many species can actually detect that fluorescent light flicker. So for many species, bringing them into captivity with those kinds of fluorescent lights is like housing them inside a room of strobes. And this could have obvious implications for bird welfare and health. Another example is that many facilities would prefer using plastic perches for birds. After all, they're much easier to clean, and you can maintain a much cleaner facility with plastic perches than with wooden perches. However, experience has shown that a lot of these wild birds, when they're housed with plastic perches, end up with severe problems with their feet, and so that wooden perches are far better to use. A third example is that it can become a huge challenge of keeping rooms clean when birds molt. So a molt of a bird is when they drop all their feathers and replace them, and all of those feathers being dropped all at the same time inside a room can create massive problems for the cleaning staff. Another possible problem is the use of gloves. So one of the things that Iacooks would like us to do is to use gloves, both as a way to protect the birds from us and a way to protect us from the birds. And so for many years we use gloves with our wild birds. The problem is that many of the species that we use have very sharp claws on the ends of their feet, and they would get stuck inside the latex of the gloves. And one of two things would happen. Either they would rip the glove to shreds, in which case it was no longer serving as an effective barrier, or the bird would get its claws hooked and trapped inside that latex, and they would struggle and twist and break their legs. And so we had several birds early on that broke their legs, and at that point we decided we should not use gloves when handling these wild birds. And finally we can talk about different training issues. So most facilities, the vast majority of researchers are using rodents. And so for example, a lot of the training modules are available only for those rodents. But doing surgery on birds can be very different. As an example, creating aseptic surgical fields is nearly impossible with feathers. So with a rodent, what you would do is you would shave the area before making your incision and making sure it was as aseptic as possible. But since birds don't have fur, we can't shave them. And if you cut feathers, then the bird cannot replace those feathers, and you end up with animals that are compromised and their ability to thermoregulate. Alternatively, you could pluck those feathers, but plucking will induce in the animal a change in its physiology as it starts to replace those feathers. And so you don't want to create a completely different physiological animal by plucking those feathers. And so doing surgery on birds is a completely different issue than doing it for rodents, and most of those training issues are the most difficult to handle. So in conclusion, it's important to remember that captive wild animals are not physiologically equivalent to free-living animals, and that individuals may or may not acclimate to captive conditions. Furthermore, species differ in their housing needs and procedural requirements. In the end, the tax on specific guides provide the best information available to iacooks. Thank you. Hello, and good afternoon. I'm Alex Motherman, and this afternoon I'm going to be discussing compliance challenges for capturing, transferring, and keeping wild bats in captivity. I'm a professor of biology at Texas A&M University. I'm a neurophysiologist and a behaviorally collegeist, which means about half of my students conduct in vivo physiology experiments with bats, and the other half do fieldwork and behavioral experiments with bats. In my lab, we've maintained a captive colony of free-tailed bats for more than 20 years. At Texas A&M, I've spent more than 10 years on the iacook. And over the last two decades, I've trained hundreds of students, graduate students, and postdocs on how to safely work with bats. My goal today is to hit upon some of the major issues that arise when we bring bats from the wild into captivity. There's a lot of ways that bats are obviously very different from rodents, and therefore bats really don't fit well into many of the guidelines that we have to work with. I can't possibly cover all of the issues, but I'm going to hit a couple of them that stand out. I'm going to briefly discuss capture and transport of wild bats. I'm going to talk about primary enclosures and space needs specifically related to bats. I'm going to briefly touch upon heterothermia and how it influences regulations for temperature and humidity control in the facilities. And then we'll talk a bit about torpor and hibernation and how that influences keeping bats and doing experiments on hibernating bats. In preparing for this, I referred to the guide for the care and use of laboratory animals, guidelines for humane transport of research animals, and guidelines of the American Society of Vemologists for the use of wild animals in research and education. Okay, so step one, we need to catch bats. The guidelines want us to put forth a really clear plan of what we intend to do. The reality is, most of us have to be opportunistic in the way we catch bats. You don't always know what you're going to find when you get there. What I have illustrated here are some common methods. You can sometimes catch bats by hand with the hand net, with a harp trap that's built to attach to the side of a house, or sometimes using a misnet. And most investigators will put all of these on their AUP in anticipation of needing one or more of them when the opportunity arises. Once you've captured your bats, you need to transport them to your facility. And this is usually not a big deal. You can catch your bats and put them in a cage like the one in the picture on the left here. A small cage like this can hold 20 to 30 insectivorous bats. We're talking about small 10 to 20 grand bats. When you're ready to drive, you can put that cage in a secondary container, and then put the secondary container in air-conditioned space in your vehicle. And this works perfectly fine for short trips a couple of hours. It's what most people do if they're even transporting the bats across the country from one university to another. This can still work just fine. And what you can do is if you have to stop someplace for the night, you can take your bats out, give them food and mortar cups, and then put them back the next day in your car. Acclamation is a big challenge with bats, particularly during the first two days there's a lot of work that goes into this. If we were talking about fruit bats, they eat fruit right away. They put fruit in the cage and they will eat it. In general, they're easier to acclimate and transport. But insect-eating bats are really challenging. There are large species-specific differences and their willingness to eat mealworms which is the main food that we have available for them. And then even within a species there's pretty big individual differences. Some will accept mealworms some will never accept mealworms. And so there's a race during that first 24-48 hours to try to figure out which individuals are going to accept mealworms. So you have to hand feed them introduce them to the worms and hope that they start eating within 48 hours. After 48 hours they're going to start to get weak. So your choice then is to either euthanize those animals or release them. Obviously I recommend releasing them if the law is in your state permitted. If you can take them back to the site where they were captured that's ideal. So obviously the biggest challenge with keeping bats in captivity is providing an appropriate primary enclosure. So it's well appreciated that ideally you can give them a large room or cage to fly in. They need to fly to stay healthy. But there's a few other issues that we can throw in here. Assuming you have the space for the bats to fly. For biosecurity purposes it's really great to have some kind of anti chamber or at least a second door so you reduce the risk of the bats escaping from the facility. While all of your bats are going to share the flight space they're going to have separate roosting sites and you want to provide more than one roosting site where the bats can spend their time when the lights are on. And then depending on the size of your colony you may need two or three or five places for them to spend their day. However, you can expect 25 or 50 bats may all decide to cram into one little bat house if they're in the mood. Normally you need some kind of platform that they can land on to access their food. You teach the bats to seek out the food that you put in cups. You get water cups and food cups hanging there and the bats will learn to find this. If you're using a room like the one pictured here a typical animal facility is supposed to have smooth walls smooth ceiling and everything washable and impermeant and that's not really ideal for bats because they can't land on smooth impermeant services they need some kind of rough things to latch on to. So that's what you see in the background here we have bricks to give places for the bats to perch. A number of my colleagues just use a large flight cage made out of mesh. You can build flight cages out of PVC pipe surrounded by a netting that you can then put in another room to create a secure and safe place. In this case the bats don't need any special purchase because they can latch on to the netting or the screening. This is sometimes a cloth screening people differ in what they put in there for enrichment if you're working with a forest bat you may want to put some sticks or logs in there over here on the right we have an artificial roost made to look like the stump of a tree which is popular for some forest bats and then other bits of enrichment like fake leaves or plants these are really in there for acoustical enrichment. When you have bats echo locating in a small place they actually have a hard time dealing with hard smooth services like the ones asked for in the guide. So it's great to add things that break up echos and create a more complex acoustic space for the bats. So how much space do we need for bats? What's appropriate? Now most of the time we take as much room as we can get when we're building our facility how much room can we get for a flight cage that's the real limitation there. Within that though we're going to have bat houses or little areas where the bats spend their day when the lights on keep in mind when the lights off when they're at subjective nighttime that's when they're going to be flying around eating and doing things and in fact they're mostly solitary during this period. As soon as the lights come on they become hyper-social they want to share a space, they want to go in a bat house or cluster up in a small corner on the roof so your facility needs to accommodate both of these kind of extremes. One having room for bats to fly around even though they're probably never going to fly around all together at the same time and then another smaller place where they can all pack in and make themselves feel comfortable and I just spit balling with numbers here like when we're transporting bats it's perfectly reasonable to put 25 bats into a pretty small cage for a short period of time because they're just going to clump together in a dense group and remain inactive until they're taken out of the cage but for long term you need bigger spaces for some flying and for having different houses and different purchase so they can spread out and you're going to need multiple feeding platforms so that they're not competing for the same food and water. The big challenge though is that when you have a flight cage in multiple little houses is that daily health inspection of individuals. This is where it gets hard and unless you've gone to the trouble to pit tag every animal or tattoo it or something like that so each one is individually recognized it can be hard to track individually all of these animals. What are the appropriate environmental conditions for bats? In general, bats are more flexible than rodents and consequently, housing temperature is rarely a big issue for facilities and animal use protocols. This flexibility drives from the fact that bats are heterothermic. Most species including neotropical fruit bats utilize a facultative daily torpor and they may also undergo seasonal hibernation but only if temperatures remain low for an extended period of time. During daily torpor bats become inactive and they lower their body temperature to meet ambient temperatures. This influences surveillance and monitoring. They also group huddle to minimize energy expenditures during torpor and they also use flying at night to raise body temperatures. Active bats may prefer warmer temperatures and high humidity but they possess the physiological, social and behavioral mechanisms to allow them to thrive at lower body temperatures. Sometimes temperature and humidity manipulations are part of the experimental protocol and they can influence experimental outcomes. In these instances, heterothermy becomes a protocol issue because the environmental conditions for the experiment may need to vary beyond what is typically considered acceptable for other small animals. Experiments specifically dealing with torpor and hibernation are going to require special conditions that warrant appropriate deviations from the usual guidelines. Hibernation is studied in a variety of different animals but bats introduce a few quirks. Here we have some pictures of the environmental chambers used at Bucknell University. These are graciously provided by doctors Dianne Reeder and Ken Fielder that illustrate how they solve this problem. These are the same types of environmental chambers used to study hibernation and 13-line ground squirrels but the protocols are different for bats because firstly, the bats still need to be housed socially even though they're in hibernation. With ground squirrels, you can treat them like big rats and put them in a box and put them in a chamber but you can't do that with bats. They still need to be housed socially. Individual bats can't be inspected daily because it will arouse them and it will interrupt the hibernation. Instead video cameras can be used as shown here to remotely monitor activity levels inside the environmental chambers without disturbing the bats. This permits less frequent opening of the chambers. Lastly live food can't be left in the chambers. Hibernating bats may arouse periodically and drink water but they usually don't need to eat. So water should obviously be made available in the cage but live mealworms can't be left in the chamber for any extended period of time because they will either die or crawl over the place and make a big mess. So in conclusion let me briefly sum up by saying that flight and sociality necessitate some modest deviations to the normal guidelines but I think these are usually quite manageable if we leave it up to the judgment of the committee. Heterothermy raises its own issues but in many ways it's an advantage. Bats are more flexible than other mammals and we can take advantage of that. The guide really doesn't address or make exceptions for the needs or make animals specifically but it certainly leaves room for deviations that are consistent with the needs of bats. Lastly biosecurity and surveillance is always going to be more challenging if you have a socially housed flying mammal but the answer to this as with many of the other issues is a well designed primary enclosure and good personnel training program solves most of your issues. Thank you.