Let us journey back to 2016, when I began studying for my Postgraduate Diploma in Endangered Species Recovery with the Durrell Conservation Academy. For this, I travelled to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, a tiny island with big ecological problems. As part of my course, I got to travel around the island, learning different conservation techniques on a variety of species and projects. From plants to passerines, tortoises to Telfair's skinks, parakeets to pigeons...and of course, bats.
I had gone out to Mauritius with the intention of giving birds a second chance. During my undergraduate degree, they had never really peaked my interest. However, with the amount of bird projects back home, I thought it might be my best chance at finding employment following my course. I wanted to try and break away from the mammal bias that often dominates a lot of people's interest. Only, what did I do during my course? I found the only native mammals on the island and completely fell in love with them.
During my bat week, we followed an expert on Pteropus niger, the Mauritian flying fox. We learned about many survey techniques, as well as the ecological importance of these wonderful creatures.
From this point, I began to learn more and more.
Bats belong to the Order, Chiroptera, which is the second most diverse group of mammals after rodents. The latest number is more than 1400 species worldwide! Which is incredible! So many of these little guys! This means that they make up approximately 20% of all mammals found on Earth.
They provide vital ecosystem services and many are classed as keystone species. These services include:
- Pollination - they are thought to pollinate more than 500 species of plants around the world, including bananas, mango, guava, agave, cocoa...so next time you have a shot of tequila or a bit of chocolate, thank a bat!
- Seed dispersal - bats have the magical talent of being able to fly and defaecate at the same time, so this makes them very effective at dispersing seeds farther from their mother trees.
- Seed germination - bat faeces are extremely nutrient rich, so it is a great fertiliser for plants!
- Crop pest/disease vector control - the insectivorous bats aren't to be upstaged by the fruit bats! They help control insect populations and some species have shown their ability to eat almost their own body weight in insects every night! So they can help save farmers money on pesticides as well as help control insects such as mosquitoes that carry malaria.
They also have many cool abilities that we don't fully understand yet. For example, their long life span. Usually, animals of a comparable size live fast and die young, such as rats. Rats have lots of babies and short lifespan. However, bats only have one baby per year and are known to live for a long time. The oldest bat on record was a Myotis brandtii (Brandt's myotis) who was at least 41 years old! That's a long time for a little mammal, so, they defy the rule of the longevity quotient. This shows just one of the many avenues there are to learn more about not just bat biology, but also further understand more about other animals and the aging process itself.
Amongst the diversity of this species group comes many feeding strategies and roosting places and behaviours and communcation! And what's more, there's still so much to learn about bats! That despite there being so many and being found on every continent except Antarctica, there is still so much we don't know about these guys!
From this point of learning about all I could (or all the information gaps), ultimately my bat research journey
grew and grew, til next thing I knew, I was helping to start a new NGO and researching a bat that had never been researched before! Since then, I have worked for an NGO in Malawi, an ecological consultancy in the UK and now studying for my PhD centred around bats in Japan. I hope to share a bit more of my journey here as I move forward with my research career.
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Educative and inspiring, thank you for sharing Fay.
Thank you!