author
James Dale Smith
A mammalogist best known for his work on bats, he wrote clearly about taxonomy, biogeography, and the natural history of species across the Americas and the Pacific. His books and papers helped document bat diversity in places such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Papua New Guinea.
1 Audiobook
Noteworthy Records of Bats From Nicaragua, with a Checklist of the Chiropteran Fauna of the Country
by J. Knox Jones, James Dale Smith, Ronald W. Turner
About the author
Working as a biologist in the early 1970s, he produced a major systematic study of the bat family Mormoopidae, published through the University of Kansas. That research focused on classification and relationships within a group of insect-eating bats and established him as a specialist in chiropteran taxonomy.
He went on to publish additional studies on bat distribution and species identification, including work on the bats of Nicaragua and Margarita Island, Venezuela. In 1983, he also described a new species of tube-nosed fruit bat from the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea, showing the wide geographic reach of his research.
He is also known to general readers for co-authoring Bats: A Natural History with John Edwards Hill in 1984. Across both technical papers and more accessible writing, his work reflects a steady interest in understanding bat diversity and making that knowledge available to other researchers and curious readers alike.