Alongside her consultancy work, Rachel carries out independent research projects focusing on bats.
Building on her masters thesis completed in 2020, Rachel is looking into sexual size dimorphism in English bats, and how foraging habitat type and foraging strategy may influence size dimorphism. As a smaller side project from this topic, she briefly looked at differences in size dimorphism in Common Pipistrelle from three locations – Cambridgeshire, the Isle of Man, and Jersey – after noticing that individuals on the Isle of Man appeared to be smaller but heavier than their mainland counterparts during trapping surveys undertaken in 2019.
- Bates (2021). Differences in Forearm Length and Weight in Common Pipistrelle from
Cambridgeshire, the Isle of Man, and Jersey. British Island Bats, Volume 2.
She is currently working on a research project looking at the immediate impacts of woodland coppicing on bat species diversity and levels of activity, in a before/after comparison study involving 15 woodlands across England. The equipment for this study was kindly funded by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species.
On behalf of the Cambridgeshire Bat Group, Rachel wrote a summary of bat records and the distribution of bats in Cambridge for the NatHistCamb project, a collaborative project bringing together all known information on the natural history of Cambridge. The resulting multi-authored book was published in October 2022. The maps used in the book originate from the Cambridgeshire Bat Atlas 2010-2019.
- Hill, M. (ed.) (2022). The Nature of Cambridge. Pisces Publications.
- Bates (2021). Cambridgeshire Bat Atlas 2010-2019. British Island Bats, Volume 2.
During 2021, Rachel was involved with writing an academic paper on developing a framework for indicators to monitor the success of climate change adaptation interventions on the natural environment, led by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). One of the outcomes of a climate change workshop which was held by the British Ecological Society, this collaborative paper was published in March 2022.
- J.W. Pearce-Higgins, L.H. Antao, R.E. Bates, K.M. Bowgen, C.D. Bradshaw, S.J. Duffield, C. Ffoulkes, A.M.A. Franco, J. Geschke, R.D. Gregory, M.J. Harley, J.A. Hodgso, R.L.M. Jenkin, V. Kapos, K.M. Maltby, O. Watts, S.G. Willis, M.D. Morecroft (2022). A framework for climate change adaptation indicators for the natural environment. Ecological Indicators, 136 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.108690