Are bats exposed to chemicals primarily through the aquatic environment?

This research proposal focus on bats and their exposure to anthropogenic chemicals.

Several anthropogenic chemicals enter our waterways annually and exposed aquatic insects bioaccumulate these chemicals by multiple orders of magnitude. Insectivores, such as bats, then consume these insects and get exposed to unproportionally high levels.

This exposure could have a wide range of ecotoxicological implications including the evolution of viral variants that are resistant to antiviral drugs.This is a multidisciplinary research projects the specific aims of determine bioaccumulations factors in an invertebrate model for a number of relevant polar emerging chemicals.

We will also investigate the transfer of chemicals during emergence for these chemicals as well as measure chemicals in bat samples collected worldwide.