Intrepid Bat Explorer

Dr. Adrià López Baucells studies and photographs bats around the globe

r. Adrià López Baucells is a bat ecologist and conservationist who has traveled the world studying and photographing bats. The National Geographic Explorer is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural Science Museum of Granollers in Catalonia, Spain. Dr. Baucells started his career working with bats at the museum in 2005 while earning his bachelor’s degree.

As he continued his studies, he worked in Colombia studying neotropical bats, and in Australia researching flying foxes. Then he spent three years in Brazil collecting data for his doctorate on bats’ habitat loss and forest fragmentation.

Dr. Adrià López Baucells spent three years deep in the Amazon rainforest collecting data for his doctorate. In his free time, he studied bat activity by water bodies, often inhabited by caimans and anacondas.

In French Guiana in 2019, Dr. López-Baucells photographed this cryptic, short-headed, broad-nosed bat (Platyrrhinus brachycephalus).

When he was there, he created a field guide to Amazonian bats that included more than 170 species with photos. “I try to use my photography to explain stories of nature conservation, in a more appealing manner, in a compelling way to the public,” he says.

He also joined expeditions in North Africa, Kenya, and Madagascar—where he conducts his National Geographic Explorer work studying bats’ role in pest control. He is very interested in applied ecology, saying, “I try to use science as a tool to change things, even if they are small or they apparently look irrelevant.”

Five years after he collected his Ph.D. data in Brazil, Dr. Baucells had an opportunity to study bats in a different rainforest, this time in French Guiana, in 2019. “I was missing so much the sounds of the rainforest, the extraordinary soundscape of the neotropical nocturnal fauna,” he says.

In 2017, Dr. López-Baucells photographed this yellow-winged bat (Lavia frons)—one of his favorite species—while researching the species in Kenya. They discovered that the species uses a small foraging area and gathers water from insects. “They only fly a few hundred meters every night, which is nothing for a bat,” he says.

After spending 11 years earning several degrees, including his Ph.D. from the University of Lisbon studying the impact of habitat fragmentation on Amazonian bats, he returned to the museum in Catalonia, where his bat work began. Now, he leads a research team with fellow researchers, Ph.D. students, technicians, and consultants. He also coordinates the Bat Monitoring Programme, an online tool for bat naturalists, scientists, and researchers to store and handle bat-related data.

One of the largest known maternity colonies of the grey long-eared bat (Plecotus austriacus) is in a monastery near Dr. López-Baucells’ home in Catalonia, Spain. “The picture not only represents the bat with beautiful, big ears but also the cultural heritage of the place. It was magnificent spending a full night inside the monastery. Somehow, after so many trips in the tropics, it reminded me of where I come from.”

Out of the 9,000 bats he captured over his three years in Brazil’s Amazonia, he only caught the red bat (Lasiurus egregius) at one site and snagged a photo of the extremely rare species. “I got so lucky to get a picture in flight. I only had one chance,” he says.

Learn more about Dr. López-Baucells’ work at adriabaucells.com

Check out the Bat Monitoring Programme at batmonitoring.org

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