Dr. Shawn Lum, the former President of the Nature Society (Singapore) and Senior Lecturer at the Nanyang Technological University Asian School of the Environment, teaches plant diversity, forest ecology, and conservation. He joins Classical Pacific to discuss the state of nature and nature conservation in a global context, with a focus on the Pacific.
In this special episode, Dr. Lum looks towards the evening sky.
Bats are in the news thanks to new insights into their evolutionary history. With about 1,500 species, they make up nearly a quarter of the world’s mammals, second only to rodents in diversity. They reside on every continent except Antarctica, and are ecologically vital as insect feeders, pollinators and seed dispersers. A landmark study titled "Reference Genomes and Fossils: Revised Bat Family Phylogeny and Biogeography," led by Dr. Ariadna Morales of the City University of New York, is the most ambitious study of bat diversity to date. It analyzed DNA sequences from major bat groups across the world and provided new insight into their evolution and evidence of a European origin.
Hawaiʻi’s very own bat, Ōpeʻapeʻa, or Hawaiian Hoary Bat,has been the state mammal since 2015 and lives across the islands. University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo bat biologist Corina Pinzari found that the species established itself on Maui about 1.3 million years ago, but there is still much to learn. Once common enough to serve as ʻaumākua for Hawaiian families, this endangered tree-roosting bat may be visible near you this evening if you look.
Dr. Lum’s conversation concludes with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus: Ouverture, performed by the Hamburger Symphoniker under Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg.
This classical conservation conversation aired on Oct. 5, 2026, on Classical Pacific.
