Follow the evidence.

Current foundation sources

• USGS North American Bat Monitoring Program — ecology and monitoring context.
• National Park Service: All About Bats — public natural-history education.
• CDC: Preventing Rabies from Bats — current public-health guidance.

Production data sources

• Mammal Diversity Database — canonical taxonomy and geography spine, pinned to a named release.
• IUCN Red List API — conservation assessments for this non-commercial educational project, subject to current API terms and citation requirements.
• GBIF multimedia guidance — media discovery only when the individual asset license, creator, source, and attribution are verified.

Production catalog requirements

The every-species catalog will not be represented as complete until an authoritative taxonomy release, current conservation-assessment source, geographic occurrence/range source, and licensed media source have been selected and imported with attribution.