Read on Twitter
My turn to share with you some great #batfacts. Here is a thread with information about diverse information about the ecology, the evolution and the conservation of bats. A thread 1/n https://twitter.com/Bats_Chiroptera/status/1247860961614221312
More than 1400 of bat species have been described to date. You can find information about the taxonomy of each species at the following website https://batnames.org/home.html 2/n
Depending on the species, bats can be found in very diverse roosts including attics, underground sites, tree holes, termite nests, pitcher plants and many others. 3/n
Bats show an incredible diversity of social systems including maternity colonies and groups of males in temperate regions, groups of males or females in subtropical regions, and mixed groups in tropical regions. 4/n https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/58/8/737/381072
Depending on the species, bats also show an incredible diversity of diets including insects, nectar, fruits, fish, frogs or even blood (the famous vampires!). 5/n
Bats can learn about food indirectly, for example via chemical cues carried by the breath and body of frugivorous bats, or via acoustic cues from feeding buzzes from insectivorous bats. Bats can also transfer information directly, via signals https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mam.12146 6/n
Many species of bats are migrating over long distances. For example, the Pipistrellus nathusius species cover distances of almost 2,000 km. 7/n https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311443225_Bat_migration_in_europe_A_review_of_banding_data_and_literature
Many species of bats hibernate in different sites including underground and in buildings. Lately, one species of bats have been found hibernating in snow in Japan! https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/08/bats-hibernate-snow-winter-behavior-japan-news/ 8/n
Bat guano (= feces) contains major nutrients and can be safely used as a fertilizer, both indoors and outdoors, and will benefit vegetables, herbs, flowers, all ornamentals, and fruit and nut trees 9/n http://www.batcon.org/resources/media-education/bats-magazine/bat_article/735
Bats are known to live very long with regard to their body mass. The longest-lived bat species known to date is Myotis brandtii. It is an insect-eating species, weighing 4-8g when adult and with a lifespan exceeding 40 years. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3212 10/n
Bats are also providing a lot of ecosystem services including insect removal, seed dispersal and pollination. http://www.batcon.org/why-bats/bats-are/bats-are-important 11/n
In Borneo, a species of bat and a subspecies of pitcher plant have developped a mutually beneficial relationship. The bat uses the plant as a roost and the plant uses the nutrients from the bat guano. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530090-100-tiny-bat-makes-home-in-a-carnivorous-plant/ 12/n
Worldwide, fifteen species of neotropical and three species of paleotropical bats are known either to roost in or to make tents in over 80 species of vascular plants. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01464350 13/n
Based on flying speeds collected using a radio transmitter, brazilian free-tailed bat is the fastest flyer in the animal kingdom https://www.mpg.de/10820081/brazilian-free-tailed-bat-is-the-fastest-flyer-in-the-animal-kingdom 14/n
With less than 2 grams, the bumblebee bat is one of the smallest mammal in the world. This is the only living species in the family Craseonycteridae, it roosts in limestone caves in Thailand and Myanmar http://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/bumblebee-bat/ 15/n
A special glycoprotein - draculin - is an anti-coagulant found in the saliva of vampire bats. Draculin is currently being explored in medicine and may be useful as a treatment for strokes and heart attacks. 16/n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draculin
Echolocation also called bio sonar is used by the majority of bat species. Different species use acoustic features such as Doppler shift compensation, whispering echolocation and nasal emission of sound 17/n https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(06)00021-8?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0169534706000218%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
Echolocation might have evolve secondarily in Old World fruit bats in this family. The lingual-echolocating Egyptian fruit bats Rousettus aegyptiacus produces sound by clicking their tongue 18/n https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5774845/
The giant noctule bat Nyctalus lasiopterus feeds on the wing upon the multitude of flying passerines during their nocturnal migratory journeys 19/n https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000205
The azorean bats Nytalus azoreum has an unusually extensive degree of diurnal activity that has been hypothesised to reflect release from the risk of diurnal predation by raptors https://bioone.org/journals/acta-chiropterologica/volume-5/issue-2/001.005.0203/Azorean-Bats-Nyctalus-azoreum-Cluster-as-they-Emerge-from-Roosts/10.3161/001.005.0203.full 20/n
Unlike all other echolocating bats which generate pulses using the larynx or the tongue, at least two species of nonecholocating fruit bats produce biosonar blicks with their wings. 21/n https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214014250
Phylogenetic reconstructions of the family Phyllostomidae suggest a double evolution of nectarivory in the family. Subtle morphological differences can be observed in the tongue structure. 22/n https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-10-165
Naive juvenile bats that had never before encountered a water body showed spontaneous drinking responses from smooth plates. 23/n https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1110
Another great fact is that female bats can transport non-volant juveniles during flight 24/n https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279851820_Observations_on_female_bats_transporting_non-volant_juveniles_during_flight
Here another fact stolen from @HenlakeBats: a palearctic species of bats eavesdrop on the sound of copulating flies 25/n https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)00706-3?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982212007063%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
Bats have many predators including spiders! The following publication reviews more than 50 incidences of bats being captured by spiders in Neotropics, Asia and Australia-Papua New Guinea by web-building spiders as well as hunting spiders https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0058120 26/n
