How many bats are in the box?
Call for photos of bat boxes
Counting bats in bat boxes is not always easy – but it is still an important part of the monitoring of forest bats.
As part of the BatTrend project at the University of Greifswald, we aim to optimize bat monitoring in Germany and evaluate different monitoring methods to enable a reliable analysis of population trends. One goal is to develop an algorithm for the automatic detection and counting of bats on photos of the inside of the box.
In this way, we want to create a comprehensible and replicable method that can be used nationwide by volunteers and organizations that carry out large-scale caste surveillance. This approach could improve the accuracy of the census and thus the reliability of population trend estimates. At the same time, this could also reduce the disturbance of the animals: taking a quick photo may be faster than keeping the box open for a manual count.
To train our algorithm, we need as many reference images as possible. We are looking for pictures taken by opening the box and photographing the bats inside. Any image quality is welcome, every contribution helps!
If you have such photos and would like to support this project, we would be very happy to receive your pictures (and all relevant details, e.g. species, number of bats, if known).
Please send them to:
