Batman swoops to glory

It's official: Aberdeen University's Batman really is a superhero. Paul Racey, one of the world's leading experts on bats, appears on the list of "eco heroes" - the UK's most influential living conservationists - in this month's issue of BBC Wildlife . Congratulations to him and to fellow researchers in the Top 50: birdman Nigel Collar of Cambridge University's zoology department; Cambridge conservation biologist Bill Sutherland; Stephen Harris, founder of Bristol University's mammal research unit; butterfly scientist Jeremy Thomas of the Natural Environment Research Council's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology; and Gaia theorist James Lovelock.