For over 60 years, Bat Research News served the community of biologists studying bats. In many ways, it helped lay the foundation for Journal of North American Bat Research. As such, we are glad to provide a new home for its archived volumes, where researchers can freely access all past content of BRN. Just click on any of the volumes listed at the bottom of this page to download it as a pdf.

For those not familiar with the background story of BRN ...

A Brief History of Bat Research News

     In the 1960s, few biologists in Canada and the United States were interested in bats, and these naturalists were scattered across the continent.   Many field techniques that we take for granted today, such as mist netting and harp trapping, were in their infancy, and much research involved banding.  Early in 1960, Wayne Davis, then at Middlebury College, in Vermont, sent a questionnaire to the few dozen bat banders that were active at the time, asking them what species they worked with, how many animals did they band each year, and whether they would be interested in a newsletter related to that activity.  Thus, in autumn 1960, the first issue of Bat Banding News, consisting of four pages, was typed on a stencil, duplicated with a mimeograph machine, hand collated, and mailed.  Starting with volume 5 in 1964, however, Davis changed the name to Bat Research News to broaden its appeal and because, as he readily admitted, “research” sounded more sophisticated than “banding”.
     The early content, though, was primarily about banding––which size band to use, development of new types of bands, prevention of band-related injuries, how to pluck animals from the ceiling of their hibernaculum for banding, and what type of cage was best for holding 200 animals at a time.  Although Davis wrote much of the newsletter himself, he regularly included “Correspondence”—brief letters from subscribers describing their bat-related activities.  Beginning with volume 2, Davis printed a list of recently published articles from the scientific literature, to help the readers remain up-to-date, and also in volume 2, he began to publish short contributed articles.  The first of these was “Notes on the Bats of E. Tennessee,” by a young Merlin Tuttle, who lamented that he saw Northern Hoary Bats (Lasiurus cinereus) only “when he did not have a gun or they were out of range”—a statement that aptly reflected the methods in use at the time.  Over the decades, these research articles became more sophisticated and covered a diversity of topics, although most were ecological and behavioral observations and descriptions of innovative techniques.  Articles became peer-reviewed starting with volume 23, in 1982.  News, recent literature, and research articles, became the mainstays of Bat Research News, which ultimately became international in its reach.  At its peak, the quarterly journal was sent to almost 500 subscribers in 46 different countries.
     Wayne Davis was sole editor through 1969, but afterwards, editorial responsibility was shared by two or more persons (Table 1).  After a brief hiatus in 1976, during which no one volunteered to produce the journal, Bat Research News resumed publication in 1977 (volume 18), with one individual, the Managing Editor, responsible for printing and distributing the periodical, whereas the other handled the content.  Beginning in 1993 (volume 33), at least three editors were involved––the Managing Editor, a Feature Editor for articles and notes, and an Editor for Recent Literature, who compiled the ever-growing list of new articles.  However, the evolution of computerized literature searches and web sites like GoogleScholar.com and ResearchGate.net, as well as instant communication through e-mail and listservs, lessened the need for Bat Research News, and it ceased publication with volume 63 at the end of 2022.  Although the Journal of North American Bat Research does not include news or lists of recent literature, the online journal builds upon the legacy of Bat Research News and publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed articles and notes on the biology of bats.

     Allen Kurta, Eastern Michigan University

Table 1.  Editors of Bat Banding News and Bat Research News.