Lee-Sim Lim

Bukit Batu, or more popularly referred to as Batu Caves, is a 156h limestone karst tower located 13km north on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. The hill is surrounded by highly urbanised landscapes of the most developed city in Malaysia. The two biggest caves of Batu Caves, the Temple Cave and Dark Cave are open to the public and are major tourist attractions over the last half century. Dark Cave is an important bio-speleological eco-tourism site being managed for conservation and education. Whilst science based natural history tours are conducted for visitors, it's management undertakes essential conservation and monitoring programs at Dark Cave. For example, physical environmental monitoring is recorded three times a week to collect microclimate data for long term records, analysis and reports. Observations of species and its locality will be recorded, including injured or dead individuals. The Dark Cave bat rehabilitation project is a major activity aimed to adopt and nurse fallen bats before being released when they are fully recovered. Another major conservation program is the monitoring and population count on the endangered trapdoor spider (Liphistius batuensis) where data are collated for analysis and reports. These and a few other sustainable practices on fauna conservation in the Dark Cave will be presented in more detail during the talk. The objective for these practices is to minimise impacts on tourism on the bio-speleological community and in turn provide valuable knowledge on some of the fauna of the Dark Cave ecosystem.

The Proto Malays are the second largest Orang Asli tribe in Peninsular Malaysia. There are six subtribes of Proto Malays, namely the Jakun, Kanaq, Kuala/Laut, Seletar, Temuan and Semelai. Very little is known about the phylogenetic relationships among the Proto Malay subtribes. This study aims to reveal the phylogenetic relationships of the Proto Malays using HVS II D-Loop sequences. Blood samples were collected from all six subtribes. DNA was extracted and 369 bp of HVS II (D-Loop region) was amplified. Phylogenetic trees were constructed using Maximum Parsimony (MP) and the Neighbour Joining (NJ) method. The HVS II D-Loop gene sequence analysis revealed close phylogenetic relationships between all the Proto Malay subtribes as they can be assembled into a single clade. Amongst all the Proto Malay subtribes, the Kanaq shared the closest phylogenetic relationships among themselves with the lowest pairwise genetic distance of 0.0055 and they also formed a monophyletic clade in the NJ ...

Batu Caves is an isolated limestone massif surrounded by urban areas located 11km north of Kuala Lumpur and making it a “habitat island” and sanctuary for wildlife. Urban habitat islands are known as biodiversity hotspots and assist conservation in fragmented city landscapes for animals. The Batu Caves complex offer a unique condition as it houses caves that offer refuge for roosting bats out of the twenty explored caves. The most extensive cave complex is the Dark Cave with more than 2000m of surveyed passages. In this study, we compared the temporal changes of bat species diversity in the habitat island of Batu Caves. Species occurrence data was compiled using a bibliographic search in literature databases and compared with a site survey conducted in 2019 using visual, echolocation and LIDAR methods. Result of the comparison showed that there is a significant decline in bat species occurrences and diversity from previous record of eight species to only four species found roosting ...

The Southeast Asian species of Hypsugo are rare bats, except for H. cadornae and H. pulveratus, which are distributed throughout the Indomalayan region. Hypsugo macrotis is restricted to Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Java and adjacent islands, and is known only from a handful of specimens. Here we report a new locality record of the species from Seremban, Peninsular Malaysia, which also represents the first known building-dweller colony of any Hypsugo from the region. We discuss the taxonomic status of two morphologically similar species, H. macrotis and H. vordermanni, and provide the first COI and cyt b gene sequences for H. macrotis and reconstruct the species' phylogenetic relationships.

Recordings of bat echolocation and social calls are used for many research purposes from ecological studies to taxonomy. Effective use of these relies on identification of species from the recordings, but comparative recordings or detailed call descriptions to support identification are often lacking for areas with high biodiversity. The ChiroVox website (www.chirovox.org) was created to facilitate the sharing of bat sound recordings together with their metadata, including biodiversity data and recording circumstances. To date, more than 30 researchers have contributed over 3,900 recordings of nearly 200 species, making ChiroVox the largest open-access bat call library currently available. Each recording has a unique identifier that can be cited in publications; hence the acoustic analyses are repeatable. Most of the recordings available through the website are from bats whose species identities are confirmed, so they can be used to determine species in recordings where the bats wer...

FIGURE 3. Principal Component Analysis based on 15 craniodental measurements of Hypsugo species. Each symbol (full square—H. macrotis, empty square—H. vordermanni, full circle—H. cadornae, empty circle—H. pulveratus, star—H. dolichodon) represents the position of an individual skull projected on the first two principal components, which together accounted for 71.65% of the total variation.

FIGURE 2. Lateral views of skulls of a) H. macrotis from Peninsular Malaysia (KGV007) b) H. macrotis syntype from Sumatra, Indonesia (RMNH 35469) c) H. vordermanni holotype from Billiton Island, Indonesia (RMNH 35570). Scale bar represents 5 mm.

ABSTRACT Past climate change and recent human activity have had major impacts on the distribution of habitats as well as the community and population genetic structure of the species occupying these habitats. In temperate zones, glaciation forced many taxa into southern refugia. In contrast, little is understood about the extent to which tropical taxa and habitats were affected by colder periods. In Southeast Asia, some argue that the tropical forest was replaced by savannah at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), whereas others suggest that the forest persisted. Studying population genetic and community structure of forest-dependent species in this region may shed light on which of these scenarios is most likely, as well as provide crucial information on the effects of recent habitat loss. To address these issues, I studied the genetic and community structure of forest-dependent insectivorous bat species in Peninsular Malaysia. Data collected at 22 sites indicated that species richness declined with latitude, consistent with post-glacial expansion of forest. To test this further, I undertook mitochondrial DNA sequencing of a widespread species, Rhinolophus affinis, and found high haplotype diversity, little phylogeographic structure and no demographic growth. These all suggest a long population history in the region with no post-LGM range expansion. Subsequent microsatellite analyses of R. affinis and the congeneric R. lepidus showed that genetic distance followed an isolation-by-distance model, and that allelic diversity was unexpectedly higher in the northern populations. Taken together, my results from the community and genetic analyses disagree with each other. These conflicts are perhaps best explained if observed clines in species richness pre-date the LGM. I conclude that there is little evidence of forest contraction in the LGM. The fact that the highest species diversity was detected in the south, which is experiencing the most forest loss due to human activity, has important conservation consequences.

Ancestorship of a person can be determined using mitochondriol DNA (maternal lineage) and/or Y chromosome DNA (paternal lineage). A phylogeny tree can be drawn using Neighbour-joining and/or Maximum Parsimony methods from the mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA. A known “average face” for each group of ancestor is determined. The mitochondrial DNA of an unknown person is mapped onto the phylogeny tree. The face of the unknown person is reconstructed using “Mendelian Morphing” technique by combining the nearest average faces for each group ancestors on the phylogeny tree. The authors feel this technique can be used for forensic and archeological facial reconstruction/approximation when the skull of skeletal remains is not available. The approximated face is about 60.70% similar (subjeclive evaluation) to the expcted face.

The aim of this study to assess the efficiency of flushing method of Dental Unit Waterline (DUWL) system in reducing the number of microorganism. Water samples were taken before and after two minutes of flushing from air-water syringes system in ten randomly selected dental units in a Dental Teaching Centre. These samples were immediately transferred to the microbiology laboratory in the cool box within 8 hours for the heterotrophic plate count (HPC) test. Paired t-test was used to analyse number of microbe before and after flushing. The numbers of colony forming unit (CFU) ranged from 13,000 to 120,000CFU/ml in unflushed samples, and 3,000 to 15,000CFU/ml in flushed samples. The mean HPC post-flushing was lower than pre-flushing [8360.00 (4561.48) vs 63300.00 (44587.12) CFU/ml]. The mean HPC between pre- and post-flushing was significantly different (P=0.004, 95% CI 22039.52, 87840.48). The coliform count from the control was 140 CFU/ml. In conclusion, flushing method of DUWL syste...

To what extent tropical forest persisted in the Malay-Thai Peninsula during the Last Glacial Maximum, or
contracted southwards with subsequent post-glacial expansion, has long been debated. These competing scenarios
might be expected to have left contrasting broad spatial patterns of diversity of forest-dependent taxa. To test for a postglacial
northward spread of forest,weexamined latitudinal clines of forest-dependent bat species at 15 forest sites across
Peninsular Malaysia. From captures of 3776 insectivorous forest bats, we found that low richness characterized the
northof the studyarea: predicted richness of9–16species, comparedwith21–23in the south. Predicted species richness
decreased significantlywith increasing latitude, but showed no relationshipwith either seasonality or peninsula width.
Analyses of beta-diversity showed that differences between communities were not related to geographical distance,
although there was evidence of greater differences in species numbers between the most distant sites. Assemblages
were consistently dominated by six cave-roosting species from the families Rhinolophidae and Hipposideridae, while
another16species were consistently rare.Wesuggest that these observed patterns are consistent with the hypothesized
northward expansion of tropical rain forest since the Last Glacial Maximum, but emphasize that more surveys in the
extreme north and south of the peninsula are required to support this assertion.

Past climate change and recent human activity have had major impacts on the
distribution of habitats as well as the community and population genetic structure of the
species occupying these habitats. In temperate zones, glaciation forced many taxa into
southern refugia. In contrast, little is understood about the extent to which tropical taxa
and habitats were affected by colder periods. In Southeast Asia, some argue that the
tropical forest was replaced by savannah at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), whereas
others suggest that the forest persisted. Studying population genetic and community
structure of forest-dependent species in this region may shed light on which of these
scenarios is most likely, as well as provide crucial information on the effects of recent
habitat loss. To address these issues, I studied the genetic and community structure of
forest-dependent insectivorous bat species in Peninsular Malaysia. Data collected at 22
sites indicated that species richness declined with latitude, consistent with post-glacial
expansion of forest. To test this further, I undertook mitochondrial DNA sequencing of
a widespread species, Rhinolophus affinis, and found high haplotype diversity, little
phylogeographic structure and no demographic growth. These all suggest a long
population history in the region with no post-LGM range expansion. Subsequent
microsatellite analyses of R. affinis and the congeneric R. lepidus showed that genetic
distance followed an isolation-by-distance model, and that allelic diversity was
unexpectedly higher in the northern populations. Taken together, my results from the
community and genetic analyses disagree with each other. These conflicts are perhaps
best explained if observed clines in species richness pre-date the LGM. I conclude that
there is little evidence of forest contraction in the LGM. The fact that the highest species
diversity was detected in the south, which is experiencing the most forest loss due to
human activity, has important conservation consequences.