BatsRule Info on Bats

02/02/2024

pollinate forests and spread seeds. Here’s how we can make peace with our noisy neighbours
https://theconversation.com/flying-foxes-pollinate-forests-and-spread-seeds-heres-how-we-can-make-peace-with-our-noisy-neighbours-215811

17/04/2023

CENTRAL TEXAS GARDENER
Planting a Bat Friendly Garden with Native Plants

Bring on beneficial bats with native plants that attract nighttime insects, food for many endangered species. Young environmentalists, including high school and college students, dug in at Austin Youth River Watch after months of study with Bat Conservation International to extend their knowledge as stewards of their future world..

https://www.pbs.org/video/planting-bat-friendly-garden-native-plants-ceoj3t/

also https://www.batcon.org/creating-a-garden-for-bats/

Bring on beneficial bats with native plants that attract nighttime insects.

20/01/2023

Bats Aid Rice Farmers in Spain | Carme Tuneu Corral
https://batsrule-helpsavewildlife.blogspot.com/2023/01/bats-aid-rice-farmers-in-spain-carme.html

https://www.merlintuttle.org/bats-aid-rice-farmers-in-spain/
https://cibio.up.pt/en/people/details/carme-tuneu-corral/
https://twitter.com/TuneuCarme?t=QN3IMDqcCwpaUogfYlB7Qg&s=09

22/11/2022

Robotic Spy Bat Hangs Out With Flying Foxes!
watch video here https://youtu.be/X3EMhFxtrxQ

Robotic Spy Bat must earn the trust of little red flying foxes and soon captures some of the most intimate moments of a maternity roost ever seen.

In the scorching heat a mother must try to keep her baby clean & fresh, but as many parents know...bath time can be quite a challenge

22/11/2022

Bionic Megabat Flying-fox Fruit Bat
https://batsrule-helpsavewildlife.blogspot.com/2022/11/bionic-megabat-flying-fox-fruit-bat.html

21/06/2022

A rare discovery of long-term memory in wild frog-eating bats
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00790-4
https://news.osu.edu/a-rare-discovery-of-long-term-memory-in-wild-frog-eating-bats/
M. May Dixon https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DXe77GoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra

" Frog-eating bats trained by researchers to associate a phone ringtone with a tasty treat were able to remember what they learned for up to four years in the wild, new research has found. "

" The study acquainted 49 bats with a series of ringtones that attracted their attention, and trained them to associate flying toward just one of the tones with a reward: a baitfish snack.

Between one and four years later, eight of those bats were recaptured and exposed again to the food-related ringtone. All of them flew toward the sound, and six flew all the way to the speaker and grabbed the food reward, meaning they expected to find food. Control bats without previous training on the sounds were comparatively unmoved by the exposure to the unfamiliar tones.

"I was surprised -- I went into this thinking that at least a year would be a reasonable time for them to remember, given all the other things they need to know and given that long-term memory does have real costs. Four years strikes me as a long time to hold on to a sound that you might never hear again," said lead author May Dixon, a postdoctoral scholar in evolution, ecology and organismal biology at The Ohio State University.

Dixon led this study at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama while she was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin.

"The environment that previous generations experienced can be extremely different from the environment an animal is born into -- and it may also change throughout an animal's life," she said. "Trying to figure out how animals use learning and memory is one way to figure out how they're going to make it in a life full of change in the modern world." "

For more beautiful professional photos of frog-eating bats (Trachops cirrhosus), see the websites of the following photographers:
Christian Ziegler https://christianziegler.photography/
https://christianziegler.photography/portfolio/tropical-bats-hyperdiversity-in-panama
Merlin Tuttle: https://merlintuttle.smugmug.com/
https://merlintuttle.smugmug.com/HighQuality/Catching-Prey/

28/05/2022

Bat brains organized for echolocation and flight
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00733-3

" A new study shows how the brains of Egyptian fruit bats are highly specialized for echolocation and flight, with motor areas of the cerebral cortex that are dedicated to sonar production and wing control. The work by researchers at UC Davis and UC Berkeley was published May 25 in Current Biology. "

" Professor Leah Krubitzer's lab at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience studies how evolution produces variation in brain organization across a wide variety of mammals, including opossums, tree shrews, rodents and primates. This comparative neurobiology approach shows how both evolution and development influence brain organization.

Although bats represent a quarter of all living mammalian species, this is the first time the full motor cortex of any bat has been mapped, said first author Andrew Halley, a postdoctoral researcher in Krubitzer's lab.

The researchers used electrodes to stimulate different areas of the motor cortex in anesthetized bats to determine muscle and limb movements produced from stimulation. While classic theories of motor cortex organization assume individual muscles are represented in motor cortex, the new study found evidence for complex movements across diverse body regions.

"What we have found instead is that brain areas represent common synergies of muscles, rather than individual muscles," Krubitzer said.

The Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) is unusual among bats because it echolocates using its tongue, rather than its larynx (the latter being the method used by most echolocating bats). Egyptian fruit bats are known to have precise motor control of their tongue and are able to aim sonar beams in different directions simply by manipulating their tongues within their mouths, without moving their heads. "

" Correspondingly, the animal's motor cortex has an unusually large region that represents movements of the tongue, Halley said. More than 40 percent of the sensory and motor cortex that was stimulated produced tongue movements -- far more than in other species that have been studied, such as primates and rodents.

This study is part of a larger comparative project in Krubitzer's laboratory that has shown motor regions of the brain are organized according to differences in their bodies and behaviors. "If you look at a rhesus macaque, a huge amount of the cortex is devoted to gripping," Krubitzer said. Similarly, in humans, the hands are heavily represented.

Coordinating forelimbs and hindlimbs for flight

A bat's wing is composed of membranes that spread across the "fingers" of its forelimb and back to its hindlimb and tail. Movement of any of these body parts can affect the shape of the wing and change the path of flight. The researchers found that few areas of motor cortex represented forelimb movement alone. Instead, the vast majority of cortex represented synergistic shoulder and hindlimb movements. This reflects the fact that when these bats fly, the power for wing movement comes from shoulder muscles, while the fine adjustments needed for flying come from coordinated movements of shoulder and hindlimb muscles.

While forelimb movements were usually coupled with those of the hindlimb, other areas of cortex did produce movements of the hindlimb muscles alone. These are likely involved in the bats' locomotor behaviors, "walking" around in trees by gripping branches with their hindlimbs.

Looking at brain organization in a wide variety of mammals helps us better understand our own brains, Krubitzer said.

"When we can look across species, it becomes a really powerful approach for making extrapolations to the human condition," she said.

Additional coauthors on the study are: Mary Baldwin, Mackenzie Englund and Carlos Pineda at UC Davis; Dylan Cooke, Simon Fraser University, Canada; Tobias Schmid and Michael Yartsev, UC Berkeley. The work was partly supported by grants from the McDonnell Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, among others. "

16/05/2022

Meet 'Ghost Bat,' Boeing's New Fighter-Like Drone
$454m Aussie Ghost Bats to hunt and kill prey in the air

https://news.defence.gov.au/service/introducing-ghost-bat

"The first Australian-built aircraft in more than 50 years has been officially named in a ceremony held at RAAF Base Amberley on March 21.

The winning name for the Airpower Teaming System was chosen by Chief of Air Force, Air Marshal Mel Hupfeld, from 733 entries received after a naming competition was held for all serving Air Force personnel and cadets.

Head of Air Force Capability, Air Vice-Marshal Robert Denney, said he was delighted to announce the Airpower Teaming System name: MQ-28A Ghost Bat.

“Congratulations to the joint winners of the naming competition, Corporal David Grieger and Flight Sergeant Stephen Barchard, who both submitted the winning name ‘Ghost Bat’, which best reflects the mission and operational capabilities of the aircraft,” Air Vice-Marshal Denney said.

“A ghost bat is an Australian hunter that uses sophisticated multi-spectral sensors to detect, hunt and kill prey both in the air and on the ground. They team together in large numbers to confuse and overwhelm their adversaries and are native to Australia.”

Corporal Grieger, a medical technician at No. 1 Expeditionary Health Squadron Detachment in Townsville, said he was chuffed to be named one of the winners and said it was a bit tricky to come up with a name that hadn’t already been used, yet still sounded cool.

“I wanted to stick with an Australian animal as the aircraft is designed and produced here,” Corporal Grieger said.

“There were lots of fun names, like Quokka, but they weren’t very well suited to an unmanned aerial vehicle. I listed off a bunch of animals and birds of prey and then whittled them down to just the two- or three-syllable ones. I tried to pick one that used some sort of advanced prey tracking.”

Flight Sergeant Barchard, of No. 82 Wing, said he chose the name because it was the only Australian bat that preyed on both land-dwelling and airborne animals. He also said the aircraft could be configured to electronic warfare, which links to the Joint Electronic Warfare Operational Support Unit, whose symbol is the ghost bat.

Corporal Grieger and Flight Sergeant Barchard have both been lucky enough to see a ghost bat in person.

“While posted to RAAF Base Tindal, my wife and I visited the nearby Cutta Cutta Caves a couple of times. The caves are home to a colony of the little critters and we saw and heard them there,” Corporal Greiger said..."

15/05/2022

These bats deter predators by buzzing like hornets
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00486-9

" "Batesian mimicry, a non-armed species imitates an armed one to deter predators," said Danilo Russo of Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II in Portici, Italy. "Imagine a bat that has been seized but not killed by the predator. Buzzing might deceive the predator for a fraction of a second -- enough to fly away."

Russo made the discovery while conducting field research in which he frequently caught the bats in mist-netting operations. "When we handled the bats to take them out of the net or process them, they invariably buzzed like wasps," Russo says.

They recognized the buzzing as some sort of unusual distress call. They thought there might be different reasons the bats made the sound. Perhaps it could send a warning to others of its species or deter predators. Russo and team put the idea aside and continued along with other research questions. Years later, they decided it was time to design a careful experiment to test their ideas about that buzzing.

In their studies, they first looked at the acoustic similarity between buzzing sounds of the bats and stinging social hymenopteran insects. Next, they played those sounds back to captive owls to see how they would react.

Different owls reacted in variable ways, likely depending on their prior experiences. Nevertheless, they consistently reacted to insect and bat buzzes by moving farther away from the speaker. In contrast, the sound of potential prey got them to move closer. The researchers say the findings provide the first example of interspecific mimicry between mammals and insects as well as one of few examples of acoustic mimicry.

Interestingly, their analysis of the sounds revealed that the similarity between buzzes broadcast by hornets and bats was most evident only once acoustic parameters that the owls can't hear were excluded from the analysis. In other words, Russo explains, the buzzing sounds are even more similar when heard the way owls hear them.

Do owls avoid that buzzing sound because they've been stung before? Russo says that stinging insects likely do sting owls, but they don't have the data to prove it. There is other evidence that birds avoid such potentially noxious insects, however. For example, when hornets move into nest boxes or tree cavities, birds in general won't even explore them and they certainly don't nest there.

Because the three study species in question all share many of the same spaces, such as buildings, rock crevices, or caves, there is likely to be plenty of opportunity for them to interact, according to the researchers. Even so, they find this intricate relationship among distantly related species intriguing.

"It is somewhat surprising that owls represent the evolutionary pressure shaping acoustic behavior in bats in response to unpleasant experiences owls have with stinging insects," says Russo. "It is just one of the endless examples of the beauty of evolutionary processes!"

Russo notes that there are many other vertebrate species that also buzz when disturbed and hundreds of bat species, some of which may use similar strategies. They hope to look for these interesting dynamics within other interacting groups in future studies. "

11/05/2022

Fruit bats in flight: a look into the movements of the ecologically important Eidolon helvum in Tanzania
Straw-coloured fruit bat

https://onehealthoutlook.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42522-020-00020-9
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw-coloured_fruit_bat

" Background
Many ecologically important plants are pollinated or have their seeds dispersed by fruit bats, including the widely distributed African straw-colored fruit bats (Eidolon helvum). Their ability to fly long distances makes them essential for connecting plant populations across fragmented landscapes. While bats have been implicated as a reservoir of infectious diseases, their role in disease transmission to humans is not well understood. In this pilot study, we tracked E. helvum to shed light on their movement patterns in Tanzania and possible contact with other species.

Methods
Tracking devices were deployed on 25 bats captured in the Morogoro Municipal and Kilombero District area near the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania. Nightly flight patterns, areas corresponding to foraging bouts and feeding roosts, and new day roosts were determined from bat movement data and characterized according to their proximity to urban built-up and protected areas. Sites for additional environmental surveillance using camera traps were identified via tracking data to determine species coming in contact with fruits discarded by bats.

Results
Tracking data revealed variability between individual bat movements and a fidelity to foraging areas. Bats were tracked from one to six nights, with a mean cumulative nightly flight distance of 26.14 km (min: 0.33, max: 97.57) based on data from high-resolution GPS tags. While the majority of their foraging locations were in or near urban areas, bats also foraged in protected areas, of which the Udzungwa Mountains National Park was the most frequented. Camera traps in fruit orchards frequented by tracked bats showed the presence of multiple species of wildlife, with vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) observed as directly handling and eating fruit discarded by bats. "

04/05/2022

A Collection of Paper Sculptures Studies the Wild Diversity of 88 Different Bat Species

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2022/04/guardabosques-paper-bats/

https://instagram.com/amiguitosdelaoscuridad?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

" Evoking the biological illustrations of Ernst Haeckel (previously) and photographic portraits of Merlin Tuttle, an ongoing project explores the incredible diversity of bats through geometric paper sculptures. Juan Nicolás Elizalde, who is half of the creative team behind the Buenos Aires-based studio Guardabosques (previously), began the series in 2019 after discovering variances in the animals’ ear shapes, fur patterns, and other distinctive characteristics. He’s since crafted 88 different species with scored and folded paper and is currently in the process of photographing each piece, from the wide-eyed flying fox to the speckled Cuban flower bat.

Titled Amiguitos de la Oscuridad, the collection has a dedicated Instagram account, where Elizalde is in the process of sharing every portrait and additional information about the species. “The project is called Little Friends of Darkness because they are nocturnal animals that I want to be friends with,” he writes, “but also because they helped me to spend the nights of the last few strange and dark years, with a little anxiety about what was happening.” "

02/05/2022

Bat box design, placement matter for energy balance in endangered bats
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220427115737.htm

Evaluating bat boxes: design and placement alter bioenergetic costs and overheating risk
https://academic.oup.com/conphys/article/10/1/coac027/6574068

08/04/2022

Microbat Management Guidelines - Roads and Maritime Services
Roads and Maritime Services
Microbat Management. Guidelines. A guide for undertaking works in culverts, bridges and other structures.

https://roads-waterways.transport.nsw.gov.au/documents/about/environment/microbat-management-guidelines.pdf

28/01/2022

https://youtu.be/ShHgsVjAmIQ

28/01/2022

A tiny change to an inner ear bone led bats to evolve into two groups https://www.newscientist.com/article/2305724-a-tiny-change-to-an-inner-ear-bone-led-bats-to-evolve-into-two-groups/

Sign up to Wild Wild Life, a free monthly newsletter celebrating the diversity and science of animals, plants and Earth’s other weird and wonderful inhabitants https://www.newscientist.com/sign-up/wild-wild-life/

09/01/2022

Derelict stables revamped as maternity unit for rare bats

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/07/special-maternity-unit-england-greater-horeshoe-bats-rarest-sussex

Rare bats that are breeding in south-east England for the first time in a century will be encouraged to rear their young in an innovative maternity unit – a tumbledown stable block.

The derelict stables at a secret location in Sussex will next month be purchased for greater horseshoe bats by the Vincent Wildlife Trust and Sussex Bat Group after the endangered species was discovered breeding in region after a 100-year absence.

The protection of the stables comes after the remarkable return to Sussex of Britain’s rarest bat. The only known greater mouse-eared bat in the country has been rediscovered in a disused railway tunnel, two years after it was previously spotted.

The 19-year-old greater mouse-eared bat – whose solitary life inspired a play – was assumed to be dead after it disappeared from the hibernation spot where it had been found each winter since 2002. But the venerable creature – whose wings can stretch to nearly half a metre in flight – was rediscovered during a bat count by enthusiasts shortly before Christmas.

“It amazed me because we assumed it had run its course,” said Tony Hutson, of the Sussex Bat Group, who first discovered species. The adult male greater mouse-eared bat has never mated and for all of this century has been the sole representative of its species in Britain.

According to experts, greater horseshoe bats and the greater mouse-eared bat are benefiting from climate change but may also be thriving in Sussex because of the spread of vineyards.

Unlike many other bat species, the greater mouse-eared bat often feeds by swooping low and picking up beetles, and so may benefit from beetle-rich bare earth in organic or low-intensity vineyards, which are increasingly popular in Sussex.

Research in Portugal has shown that the presence of bats around vineyards reduces pests that eat the vines and also lessens grape fungal infections caused by those pests. Fiona Matthews, a professor of environmental biology at the University of Sussex, is to supervise a PhD investigating relationships between bats and English vineyards.

Matthews called on Natural England to investigate whether more greater mouse-eared bats were living undetected in their former range – the species was also once found in Dorset – and also consider reintroducing the species.

“This individual bat is obviously getting quite geriatric now, it’s a fascinating thing, but I keep turning over in my head what could be done and why aren’t we doing more about this?” she said.

“Given that we think Britain is probably going to become more suitable rather than less with climate change, why don’t we have a recovery programme for the greater mouse-eared bat? With climate change, we know this species is losing its range in southern Europe. They will probably need to move north for their survival. They are in northern France which is not that different and not that far away. Maybe they just need a helping hand across the Channel.”

Matthews said the bat was known to roost in large roof spaces – in churches, stately homes and large barns – and genetic identification of bat droppings found in likely locations could detect if other individuals are at large.

After decades of regional extinctions, the return of the rare greater horseshoe bat to south-east England has been boosted by the protection of its only known maternity roost east of Hampshire, with bat enthusiasts raising enough money to buy the £200,000 Victorian stable block where the animals were discovered rearing young in 2019.

The Vincent Wildlife Trust and Sussex Bat Group must raise an additional £150,000 to repair the tumbledown block, install partitions for warmth and shelter, and ensure the air-flow and humidity is just right for the bats, which lost 90% of its population in the 20th century. Cameras will also be fitted so people can watch the maternity colony without disturbing it.

The species’ recovery has been assisted by milder winters but also by the Vincent Wildlife Trust buying or leasing barns, churches and an old mill that house maternity roosts. It has 37 such “bat reserves” across Britain and Ireland, in which half the reviving population of 13,000 greater horseshoe bats raise their young.

Lucy Rogers, the chief executive of the Vincent Wildlife Trust, said: “Buying one stable block seems like quite an extravagant thing but it’s not just the building – it’s bats returning to the whole of the south-east, and this is the most cost-effective and tried and tested way of making that happen.

“We hope the colony will be safeguarded and can increase, and then we can work with partners and get some landscape-scale conservation going as well, which will enable this species to thrive in the wider area.”

Derelict stables at secret Sussex location will be revamped to house greater horseshoe bats

30/10/2021

Visit here to vote https://www.birdoftheyear.org.nz/long-tailed-bat