Artificial Lighting and Bat Activity

Student Spotlight - Bethany James

My name is Bethany James, I’ve recently finished my fourth year of studying a BSc (Hons) in Wildlife and Conservation Management at SRUC, Craibstone. I’m now eagerly awaiting my final results and will be graduating in August.

After noticing an increase in the use of nighttime lighting around properties in the countryside close to my home, I decided to focus my honours dissertation on investigating how artificial light at night may impact bat activity. Looking specifically at rural environments. I was fortunate to find some willing participants who already had the use of external lighting and were kind enough to allow me to monitor bat activity on their properties, while carrying out controlled lighting treatments. You can see my research poster below:

View Bethany’s research poster here.