New Biology Chair wins Fleming Award

Bats are maligned creatures.  Just because they fly about with startling speed, agility and are mostly unseen in the night sky, they carry reputations rife with superstition and disease.  Dr. Brock Fenton, recently appointed to the Chair of Biology here at Western, has made a career in setting the record straight.  He has taken his natural curiosity about these animals and made a case for their ecological importance.  He has spread this message through print, electronic media, several books and personal appearances.  By using bats as a general theme to illustrate general principles in biology and conservation, he has built a program of public awareness across people of all ages.  Because of this work, Dr. Fenton will receive the Sandford Fleming Medal and Citation from the prestigious Royal Canadian Institute (RCI).

Dr. Fenton says that bats are “really good animals for research from different points of view, they’re also really good for education.”  He adds, “It’s always been fun to share with people at different levels and certainly… there’s a whole bunch of issues around public health and there’s a whole bunch of issues around flight.”

In his public presentations Fenton clears up some misconceptions about these animals, “Bats are not blind, you might say there are about 1100 species in the world and all of them have eyes. All of them can see and many of them see at least as well as we do.” Fenton says that the mythology and folklore surrounding bats makes it easier to introduce the science.  “We spend a fair bit of time talking to school kids about bats,” says Fenton.  “That’s one of the things that I think makes bats such a good research area in that you can have your students do their research but they’re also making these connections to people.”  Fenton’s lab researches the biology and ecology of these animals,  “You have bats that have stripes down the back, you have a black bat with white stripes or a black bat with big white spots.  We don’t know who they’re for.  On a skunk we think we know that the black and white is a warning, for bats, we don’t know.”

Another student of his is working in Georgia studying the effects of grills or gates on the entrance to caves and mines where bats hibernate.  “The question is”, says Fenton, “when you put up a gate, does that affect the behaviour of the animals.  If they respond, how do they respond and does that tell us anything about the way a gate should be designed so that is not a problem.  The difficulty is that caves and mines can be quite dangerous for people so, especially in residential areas, you probably don’t want people going in and out.  The second issue is that by having people going in and out its disturbing the animals and it’s a direct cause of mortality.”

The RCI focuses its energies on various programs related to public awareness of science.  The Medal is named after Sir Sandford Fleming, one of the founders of the RCI, who is perhaps best known as the surveyor for the Canadian Pacific Railway and the inventor of standard time and time zones.

Past recipients include such luminaries as, David Suzuki, Jay Ingram, Eve Savory, John C. Polanyi, Bob McDonald and Robert Buckman.

The Medal and Citation will be presented at the Annual General Meeting and Conversazione of the RCI in April 2004.

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