Our research is focused on the interaction between the city's landscape and its bat communities
We employ methods from bioacoustics, spatial ecology, and community ecology to study the city's bats. Below is a brief list of our recent and on-going research projects within New York City. Each of these represents a close collaboration with the staff and support groups of our partner parks, without whom our work would not be possible.
We are currently working with Friends of the High Line and their Emerging Leaders Program to study how bats use the park's different habitats. The first study of it's kind, this research will eventually enable us to map bat hot spots on the High Line and understand how the city's 3D structure influences bat movement.
Bat activity along the High Line can vary quite a bit from one section of the park to the next. Check out our results from the 2026 research season so far and see for yourself!
We currently have a network of six bat detectors spread throughout Brooklyn and Queens. These detectors are long-term installations that have been recording bat activity at their respective locations since the beginning of the summer. The images below will take you to the results page for our survey sites. We invite you to take a look and see how different the night life can be between the city's greenspaces!
We have been working with Green-Wood Cemetery since 2024 and were honored to be one of their 2025 Environmental Research Fellows.
In a 2024 comparison of bat activity between Green-Wood Cemetery and the Quaker Cemetery in Prospect Park, we learned something unique about Green-Wood: its bat activity was dominated by big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus). In fact, Green-Wood hosted, on average, about 5x more big brown activity than its neighboring park. This is unusual for New York City as the eastern red bat (Lasiurus borealis) is typically dominant in our local parks.
Our 2025 research produced this big brown bat hot spot map of Green-Wood (left, warmer colors=higher activity). As you can see, we learned that big brown bats were especially fond of the cemetery's ponds (the four red spots) and its less-forested perimeter. Big browns are fast flyers, but they are not very nimble. This map suggests they may be fond of Green-Wood because it is easier for them to move around in than more densely forested parks like Prospect Park.