Project update 23: Project Pteropus wrap-up

Our Fruit Bat Fundraiser by Project Pteropus ends today – and we managed to raise RM43,790, well beyond our original target of RM30,000!!! We’re so deeply grateful to everyone who supported this initiative – those who donated funds to help us complete our research next year, those who bought merchandise to help us widen our public outreach impact this year, and those who helped spread the word. Thank you for helping us to make this fundraiser such a success.

While our public outreach initiatives also end today, the additional funds we’ve raised will allow us to extend this project for an additional 6 months into 2022 in order to complete our durian pollination research that was negatively impacted and delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. During this extended time period we’ll also be able to finish up our work on monitoring and protecting flying fox populations, which was also delayed due to the pandemic. So we’re on track to successfully complete and wrap up this project as originally planned – just on a slightly later timeline!

Take a peek into the team and our work on fruit bat conservation that you’re helping to support:

Publication update 26: The critical importance of fruit bats!

We’re super excited to make yet another publication announcement so soon after our first one from Project Pteropus Phase 2!

A massive labour of love first started by Sheema in 2013, this second paper from us is another literature review – this time looking at bat-plant interactions that have been documented for the Old World over the 1985-2020 period (36 years’ worth of research!). Published as part of the special issue ‘Animal Seed Dispersal: An Ecosystem Service In Crisis’, it’s fully open access, which means it can be read online, or the PDF file can be downloaded for free.

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Publication update 25: Bane or Blessing? Reviewing Cultural Values of Bats across the Asia-Pacific Region


Our inaugural publication from Phase 2 of Project Pteropus has been published by the Society of Ethnobiology! Led by Mary-Ruth as first author and Sheema as senior author, this literature review was a regional collaboration involving 13 co-authors from 9 countries across the Asia-Pacific, including Malaysia (Peninsular and Sarawak), China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Samoa. It’s fully open-access, which means you can both read it online or download the PDF, completely for free: https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-ethnobiology/volume-41/issue-1/0278-0771-41.1.18/Bane-or-Blessing-Reviewing-Cultural-Values-of-Bats-across-the/10.2993/0278-0771-41.1.18.full
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