For the past four years, Bucknell University mammalogist DeeAnn Reeder has been raising nets high into the darkened forest canopies of South Sudan to catch bats. During her latest journey to the embattled country in 2011, and working with no electricity or running water and scant protection from the elements, Reeder and her team of graduate students and field technicians performed makeshift experiments in the field to probe the immune capabilities of the captured bats in the hopes of understanding why these mammals are such good reservoirs for deadly viruses such as Ebola and Marburg.
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