Flying animals, changing weather conditions, and human architecture mingle in complicated ways within the lowest levels of the atmosphere. Two years ago, Boston University biologist Thomas Kunz coined the term "aeroecology" to describe the science of this unique borderland skimming the surface of the planet.

The new discipline combines atmospheric science, geography, ecology, and computational science in ways that even its pioneers could not have predicted. In a news briefing at the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting, postdoctoral fellow Winifred Frick recalled her amazement at being told by University of Oklahoma researcher Phillip Chilson that meteorologists could count the number of raindrops in a cloud. Her immediate question: "Could you do this for the number of bats in a cloud?"


Using networked weather radar systems that record atmospheric data every five minutes in the United States, Frick has gone far beyond counting wings. In her studies of Brazilian free-tailed bats in Texas, the University of California, Santa Cruz, researcher used radar data to watch a massive storm front moving along the landscape, pulling long lines of insects and hungry following bats behind it. (Watch a video interview with Frick discussing the surprising findings from her research)

It's these types of previously invisible interactions that have Frick and others wondering how life in the aerosphere will cope with climate change, pollution, cell phone towers, and deforestation.

The news staff of the journal Science will ask Kunz more about bat behavior and the applications of aeroecology in an online chat at Live@AAAS on Saturday 19 February.