Thomas Kunz, a mammalogist at Boston University who studied and advocated for bats, died April 13 from complications associated with COVID-19. He was 81.
Kunz was born in Independence, Missouri, on June 11, 1938. He received a bachelor’s in biology in 1961 and master’s in education in 1962 from Central Missouri State College. He went on to receive a master’s from Drake University in biology in 1968.
After earning a PhD from the University of Kansas in systematics and ecology in 1971, Kunz joined the faculty in the Department of Biology at Boston University. He remained there until 2011, when injuries from a car accident forced him to retire from academic duties.
Kunz studied the ecology and population dynamics of bats in the United States, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Trinidad, India, and Malaysia. He used thermal infrared imaging to count bats in colonies and track flight patterns.
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