astronomy

Merlin Tuttle

Merlin Tuttle is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Merlin Tuttle rather than just read about it. In short: Merlin Devere Tuttle (born August 26, 1941) is an American ecologist, conservationist, writer and wildlife photographer who has specialized in bat ecology, behavior, and conservation. He is credited with protecting the Austin Congress Avenue Bridge bat colony from extermination.

Key takeaways

Merlin Tuttle belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Merlin Tuttle to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Merlin Tuttle from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Merlin Devere Tuttle (born August 26, 1941) is an American ecologist, conservationist, writer and wildlife photographer who has specialized in bat ecology, behavior, and conservation. He is credited with protecting the Austin Congress Avenue Bridge bat colony from extermination. Tuttle is currently active as founder and executive director of Merlin Tuttle's Bat Conservation (MTBC) in Austin, Texas. He also founded the conservation organizations Bat Conservation International, from which he retired in 2009, and helped establish the National Park of American Samoa. Tuttle has also published research on gray bat population ecology migration, gray bat foraging habits and the frog-eating bats Trachops cirrhosus. Tuttle's photography of bats has been featured in numerous National Geographic Society publications, including 100 Best Pictures and 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery. In 2002, the United States Postal Service released a commemorative stamp series featuring Tuttle's photographs. In 2019, Tuttle served as science editor and photographer for the Smithsonian Books publication BATS: an illustrated guide to all species. He has received accolades for his research and conservation work, including the Gerritt S. Miller Jr. Award, and has been honored by the Texas State House of Representatives. In 2015, Tuttle published his memoir, The Secret Lives of Bats: My Adventures With the World's Most Misunderstood Mammals.

Early life

Tuttle was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. According to his autobiography The Secret Lives of Bats, he has always been fascinated by nature for as long as he can remember. He was raised around Knoxville, Tennessee with his two siblings and parents Horace and June Tuttle. In April 1959 at age 17, Tuttle learned of a bat cave near his home in Knoxville. After convincing his father to venture into the cave with him, he found himself surrounded by a swarm of gray bats while climbing through a hole that served as the bat's exit route. He describes this as his introduction to the gentle nature of bats, which did not scratch or bite him as they swarmed around him attempting to exit the cave. Curious about where the bats traveled after they emerged from the cave, Tuttle repeatedly returned with his parents to watch them emerge and noticed that they disappeared for months at a time. Despite reading in textbooks that gray bats were non-migratory, he became convinced by his observations that the bats must be migrating during these periods of absence. After documenting field notes and collecting two museum-type specimens from the cave, Tuttle's mother drove him to meet with scientists from the Smithsonian's Division of Mammals in Washington, D.C., who equipped him with several thousand bat bands for him to track the gray bat movements. This experience served as Tuttle's introduction to bat research.

Education Tuttle earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in zoology from Andrews University, located in Berrien Springs, Michigan. He then entered graduate school at the University of Kansas, where he studied systematics, ecology, and evolution. His master's thesis focused on zoogeography of Peruvian bats. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1974, completing his dissertation on population ecology and migration of gray bats. He subsequently published several academic papers based on his research, as well as numerous books about bats (many of which are aimed at lay readers).

Career

Smithsonian Venezuelan Project In 1965, Tuttle was hired by the U.S. Army and the Smithsonian Institution to co-direct an expedition into the Amazonian Rainforest territory of Venezuela. The project, coordinated by Charles O. Handley, Jr., curator of mammals at National Museum of Natural History, was intended to collect a large, representative sample of Venezuelan mammals and their ectoparasites in order to study mammal-parasite-habitat relationships.

Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge In March 1986, Tuttle resigned from his position as Curator of Mammals at the Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin and relocated his fledgling conservation organization, Bat Conservation International, to Austin, which had been making national headline news for its urban bat population. At the time, the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge bats were widely unpopular and the colony was at risk of extermination. Tuttle's public education campaign to save the bats through dispelling myths and misconceptions about their threats to the citizens of Austin was met with widespread skepticism and earned him the 1986 Texas Monthly Bum Steer Award. However, with help from a coalition of leaders in the Austin community, the Public Health Department, and news media, Tuttle's persistent education efforts successfully reversed public opinion about the bats and turned the Congress Avenue Bridge bat colony into the highly-profitable tourist attraction for the city of Austin that it is today.

National Park of American Samoa In 1985, BCI trustees Verne and Marion Read, Paul Cox, a professor of botany at Brigham Young University and Tuttle traveled to American Samoa to investigate the decline of Samoan Flying Fox populations due to the decimation of their habitat and commercial hunting. Their work evolved into a successful two-year initiative to create the National Park of American Samoa with the aid of American Samoa Governor A.P. Lutali, Lt. Governor Eni Hunkin, Samoan chiefs and a coalition of legislators and supporters. On October 31, 1988, U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed the Samoan park bill into law, establishing the first-ever tropical rainforest protected by the U.S. National Park Service and included 8,500 acres of pristine rainforest, coastal habitat, and coral atolls.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Merlin Tuttle

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Merlin Tuttle claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Merlin Tuttle before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Merlin Tuttle ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Merlin Tuttle

In research: Merlin Tuttle appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Merlin Tuttle in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Merlin Tuttle is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1941 births, American conservationists, American ecologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Merlin Tuttle outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Merlin Tuttle in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Merlin Tuttle means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Merlin Tuttle out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Merlin Tuttle in simple terms?

Why does Merlin Tuttle matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Merlin Tuttle?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Merlin Tuttle.