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fruit bat

 
American Heritage Dictionary:

fruit bat

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n.
Any of various fruit-eating bats of the suborder Megachiroptera, inhabiting chiefly tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Australia.


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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

fruit bat

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Any of numerous tropical Old World bats in the family Pteropodidae as well as several species of herbivorous New World bats. Old World fruit bats are widely distributed from Africa to South Asia and Australasia. Most species rely on vision rather than on echolocation to avoid obstacles. Some species are solitary, some gregarious; most roost in the open in trees, though some inhabit caves, rocks, or buildings. Some are red or yellow, and some are striped or spotted. They eat fruit or flowers (including pollen and nectar). The smallest species in the family, the long-tongued fruit bats, reach a head and body length of about 2.5 in. (6 – 7 cm) and a wingspan of about 10 in. (25 cm). The same family contains the largest of all bats, the flying foxes, which attain lengths up to 16 in. (40 cm) and a wingspan of 5 ft (1.5 m). New World fruit bats are generally smaller and make use of echolocation. They are found in the tropics, with many species belonging to the genera Artibeus and Sturnira.

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Columbia Encyclopedia:

fruit bat

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fruit bat, fruit-eating bat found in tropical regions of the Old World. It is relatively large and differs from other bats in the possession of an independent, clawed second digit; it also depends on sight rather than echo-location in maintaining orientation. The Pteropodidae, or flying foxes, are S Asian fruit bats whose short jaws and powerful teeth are specially adapted for piercing the rinds of tough fruit. They include the largest of all bats, the kalang (Pteropus vampyrus), which has a wingspan greater than 5 ft (1.5 m). The Macroglossidae, or long-tongued fruit bats, are widespread throughout S Asia, Africa, New Guinea, and Australia. Specialized for a diet of pollen and nectar, their snouts and tongues are greatly elongated. All fruit bats are highly mobile, traveling as much as 30 mi (48 km) in search of food. They nest in trees and all but a few species are completely nocturnal. Fruit bats are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Chiroptera.

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Megabat

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"Fruit bat" redirects here. For other uses, see Fruit Bat (disambiguation).
Megabats
Temporal range: Oligocene–Recent
Large flying fox, Pteropus vampyrus
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Chiroptera
Suborder: Megachiroptera or Yinpterochiroptera
Dobson, 1875
Family: Pteropodidae
Gray, 1821
Subfamilies

Nyctimeninae
Cynopterinae
Harpiyonycterinae
Macroglossinae
Pteropodinae
Rousettinae
Epomophorinae

Megabats constitute the suborder Megachiroptera, family Pteropodidae of the order Chiroptera (bats). They are also called fruit bats, old world fruit bats, or flying foxes.

Contents

Description

Spectacled flying-fox (Pteropus conspicillatus)

The megabat, contrary to its name, is not always large: the smallest species is 6 centimetres (2.4 in) long and thus smaller than some microbats.[1] The largest reach 40 centimetres (16 in) in length and attain a wingspan of 150 centimetres (4.9 ft), weighing in at nearly 1 kilogram (2.2 lb). Most fruit bats have large eyes, allowing them to orient visually in the twilight of dusk and inside caves and forests.

Their sense of smell is excellent. In contrast to the microbats, the fruit bats do not use echolocation (with one exception, the Egyptian fruit bat Rousettus egyptiacus, which uses high-pitched clicks to navigate in caves).

Behaviour and ecology

Megabats are frugivorous or nectarivorous, i.e., they eat fruits or lick nectar from flowers. Often the fruits are crushed and only the juices consumed. The teeth are adapted to bite through hard fruit skins. Large fruit bats must land in order to eat fruit, while the smaller species are able to hover with flapping wings in front of a flower or fruit.[citation needed]

Frugivorous bats aid the distribution of plants (and therefore, forests) by carrying the fruits with them and spitting the seeds or eliminating them elsewhere. Nectarivores actually pollinate visited plants. They bear long tongues that are inserted deep into the flower; pollen thereby passed to the bat is then transported to the next blossom visited, pollinating it. This relationship between plants and bats is a form of mutualism known as chiropterophily. Examples of plants that benefit from this arrangement include the baobabs of the genus Adansonia and the sausage tree (Kigelia).

Classification

Head of a masked flying fox or fruit bat (Pteropus personatus)
Livingstone's fruit bat Pteropus livingstonii
Fox Island, Australia, is believed to be home to the largest colony of flying foxes on the continent.

Bats are usually thought to belong to one of two monophyletic groups, a view that is reflected in their classification into two suborders (Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera). According to this hypothesis, all living megabats and microbats are descendants of a common ancestor species that was already capable of flight.

However, there have been other views, and a vigorous debate persists to this date. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, some researchers proposed (based primarily on the similarity of the visual pathways) that the Megachiroptera were in fact more closely affiliated with the primates than the Microchiroptera, with the two groups of bats having therefore evolved flight via convergence (see Flying primates theory).[2] However, a recent flurry of genetic studies confirms the more longstanding notion that all bats are indeed members of the same clade, the Chiroptera.[3][4] Other studies have recently suggested that certain families of microbats (possibly the horseshoe bats, mouse-tailed bats and the false vampires) are evolutionarily closer to the fruit bats than to other microbats.[3][5]

List of species

The family Pteropodidae is divided into seven subfamilies with 186 total extant species, represented by 44 - 46 genera:

FAMILY PTEROPODIDAE

As disease reservoirs

Fruit bats have been found to act as reservoirs for a number of diseases which can prove fatal to humans and domestic animals,[citation needed] but the bats themselves sometimes have no signs of infection.

Researchers tested fruit bats for the presence of the Ebola virus between 2001 and 2003. Three species of bats tested positive for Ebola, but had no symptoms of the virus[citation needed]. This indicates the bats may be acting as a reservoir for the virus. Of the infected animals identified during these field collections, immunoglobulin G (IgG) specific for Ebola virus was detected in Hypsignathus monstrosus, Epomops franqueti, and Myonycteris torquata.

The epidemical Marburg virus was found in 2007 in specimens of the Egyptian fruit bat, confirming the suspicion this species may be a reservoir for this dangerous virus.[6]

Fruit bats are considered a delicacy by South Pacific Islanders, where consumption has been suggested as a possible cause of Lytico-Bodig disease.[7]

Other diseases which can be carried by fruit bats include Australian bat lyssavirus and Henipavirus (notably Hendra virus and Nipah virus), both of which can prove fatal to humans.

Footnotes

  1. ^ E.g., the Mauritian Tomb Bat. See Garbutt, Nick. "Mauritian Tomb Bat." Mammals of Madagascar: A Complete Guide. Yale University Press. 2007. p. 67. [1]
  2. ^ Pettigrew JD, Jamieson BG, Robson SK, Hall LS, McAnally KI, Cooper HM (1989). "Phylogenetic relations between microbats, megabats and primates (Mammalia: Chiroptera and Primates)". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 325 (1229): 489–559. doi:10.1098/rstb.1989.0102. 
  3. ^ a b Eick, GN; Jacobs, DS; Matthee, CA (September 2005). "A nuclear DNA phylogenetic perspective on the evolution of echolocation and historical biogeography of extant bats (chiroptera)" (Free full text). Molecular Biology and Evolution 22 (9): 1869–86. doi:10.1093/molbev/msi180. PMID 15930153. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long. 
  4. ^ Simmons, NB; Seymour, KL; Habersetzer, J; Gunnell, GF (2008-02-14). "Primitive Early Eocene bat from Wyoming and the evolution of flight and echolocation". Nature 451 (7180): 818–21. doi:10.1038/nature06549. PMID 18270539. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7180/abs/nature06549.html. "recent studies unambiguously support bat monophyly" 
  5. ^ Adkins RM, Honeycutt RL (1991). "Molecular phylogeny of the superorder Archonta" (PDF). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 88 (22): 10317–10321. doi:10.1073/pnas.88.22.10317. PMC 52919. PMID 1658802. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/88/22/10317.pdf. 
  6. ^ "Deadly Marburg virus discovered in fruit bats". msnbc. August 21, 2007. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20382188/. Retrieved 2008-03-11. 
  7. ^ Monson, C. S.; Banack, S. A.; Cox, P. A. (2003). "Conservation implications of Chamorro consumption of flying foxes as a possible cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-parkinsonism dementia complex in Guam". Conservation Biology 17 (3): 678–686. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.2003.02049.x. 

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pteropodidae


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American Heritage Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Random House Word Menu. © 2010 Write Brothers Inc. Word Menu is a registered trademark of the Estate of Stephen Glazier. Write Brothers Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia on Answers.com. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Megabat.  Read more

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