Bats provide us with important ecosystem services including insect population controllers in agricultural areas. Studies on bats and insect abundance in Malaysian rice fields are still lacking. Two harp traps and two mist nets were used to trap bats at the Gunung Keriang while a light trap was used to sample insects in the rice field area at three identified sites. A total of 2499 bats from 27 species were captured and for insect abundance a total of 161,539 individuals from 11 orders were captured. Rhinolophus pusillus was recorded as the dominant bat species in all seasons. In the dry season, the dominant insect pest was Chilo polychrysus (Stem borer) and in the wet season, Nilaparvata lugens (Brown planthopper) the dominant insect pest species. Insects from the Order Coleoptera (the dominant insect Order in dry season) may be eaten by bats that have a larger body size and that have a strong bite force. Due to high food availability and insect abundance, the peak time of bat foraging activity is the same as the peak time of insect emergence. We found that there is a significant relationship between bat activity with temperature and rainfall, but not with insect abundance. This study further highlights the importance of bats in regulating the insect pests population naturally in the rice field area.

Mangroves cover a large area of the coastal region of Kutch in the state of Gujarat in western India. The Maldharis, the inhabitants of this region, have been using mangrove forests for traditional livelihoods such as the rearing of Kharai camel, which feeds mainly on mangrove leaves. The objective of our interdisciplinary project is to explore direction of changes for the sustainability of this community. Since the linkage between the ecosystem services of the mangrove forests and the traditional pastoralism of this community is one important aspect to consider, a clear description of the historical evolution of this ecosystem is an important step for basic information. In addition to collecting narrative-based information from communities, we are using satellite remote sensing data to develop a quantitative description of mangrove biomass since the 1980s. Using Landsat multispectral imageries, we calculated spatial averages of NDVI for several target forest components. The overall NDVI of mangrove forests in the region has increased from 1988 to the present, suggesting an increase in biomass. However, it has been decreasing from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. The most likely reason is that the low precipitation (drought) in the late 1990s to early 2000s increased the salinity of soil and groundwater, which in turn increased water stress. Contrastingly, the lack of significant changes in NDVI due to a single year of drought suggests that mangrove forests are resilient to drought. On the other hand, it is inferred that several factors were involved in the increase of NDVI since the early 2000s. Two of these factors are the higher precipitation during this period and the fact that the Forest Department has been restricting pastoralists’ access to mangrove forests since 2005. These results suggest that climatic conditions and pastoralism intensity influuence the long-term variation of NDVI values in each forest segment. This also suggests that local pastoralists harvested leaves and branches from the mangrove forests as resources but did not destructively take forest trees. This suggests that the Maldharis base their livelihood on maintaining the mangrove forests.