We think that wing pelage may be important from a thermoregulatory standpoint during roosting, and likely has some biomechanical effect during flight.

After looking at the front and back of a lot of bat wings on field trips, in museum collections, and using existing images of bats in flight, we found that body mass and various aspects of bat ecology are related to the presence of fur on the wing. Here's @ashockney24.bsky.social at TAMU's BRTC.

Bats have relatively naked wings - i.e., they are furless - but that's not entirely true. We decided to look across the diversity of bat species to determine which bats had fur on their wings, where on the wings bats tend to have fur, and speculate as to why there is variation in wing pelage.

Loved this write-up of our fieldwork in Tanzania this summer, led by grad student Annie Finneran and undergrad Caroline Pollan. I felt very lucky to join them to catch some bats there!

news.rice.edu/news/2025/ba...

Another active night at Buffalo Bayou watching the bat emergence. The bats come out before sunset, and so do the predators, with hawks catching them mid-air and herons plucking them from their roosts

Battle of the wings at Buffalo Bayou (the bat got away 😮‍💨🦇)

Nice bat emergence in Houston the other night, with a red-shouldered hawk on the hunt.

Grad student Kate checking out some bats in a local colony. Glamorous fieldwork!

The Rummel Lab is almost ready for move-in! What a view 🥹

Houston showing up to the snow day with the most creative sleds:

Super proud of my grad students @ashockney24.bsky.social and Kate Manges Douglas. They gave stellar presentations at #SICB2025 after just one semester of grad school!

Are you at #SICB2025 and interested in bats? Check out @ashockney24.bsky.social’s talk on how furry bat wings are (Monday at 1:45PM in International 5), and Kate Manges Douglas’s poster on how hot bat wings are (Monday, P3-121)! Sneak peaks below:

I'm Andrea and I work on bat flight/physiology! Here's me with a pallid bat

Hi 👋 I’m a new assistant prof at Rice studying bats and what makes them so cool. Here I am with what quite possibly may be the ugliest bat in the world, my fav Centurio senex (handled with proper permits and experience)

Hi folks! I’m Andrea and I’m a postdoc at Princeton studying thermal and muscle physiology in bats and lizards. Bats are my true love - they’re the coolest mammals ever