I am fascinated by the ecology, taxonomy and ecosystem services and disservices of African bats and terrestrial small mammals, having co-authored many scientific and popular papers, descriptions of new species, and several reference books on small mammals, rodents and bats. My research has centred on Afromontane species of bats, shrews and rodents, and the modelled impacts of climate change on their future distribution and survival. I am passionate about bat conservation, having contributed to numerous IUCN Redlist accounts, and I am dedicated to demonstrating their critical ecosystem services through natural pest control.
I am increasingly concerned about the impacts we are having on bats, especially through agricultural intensification and the use of agrochemicals. My students and I have seen how the former can reduce functional diversity of bats in monocultures in Limpopo, South Africa. The impact of pesticides on bats directly and indirectly remains to be documented, but is likely to be profoundly negative. As shown by the devastation of cave-roosting bats in eastern North America through the white-nose fungus epidemic in bats, loss of bats translated to loss of their ecosystem services and increasing dependence of pesticides which have been shown to impact human health and infant mortality.
https://www.ufs.ac.za/aru/aru-team/aru-team/prof-peter-taylor