The perils of pollination

Paul Racey — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 13:01:01 +0000

Although Eonycteris spelaea pollinates commercially important plants, as illustrated in the recent paper by Sara Bumrungsri and colleagues, this sometimes costs them their lives. Fruit farmers find the flowers of such plants lying on the ground the morning after bats have visited and think the bats have destroyed them. The farmers do not realise that bat-pollinated flowers generally open for one night only and then fall, so they put up nets to prevent the bats from approaching the flowers. The bats get caught in the nets and are left to die. Public education is trying to prevent this travesty.

Sara Bumrungsri, Duncan Lang, Colin Harrower, Ekapong Sripaoraya, Kitika Kitpipit and Paul A Racey. 2103. The dawn bat, Eonycteris spelaea Dobson (chiroptera: Pteorpodidae) feeds mainly on pollen of economically important food plants in Thailand. Acta Chiropterologica 15: 95-104

Bumrungsri et al_Acta Chiro_2013

Photos below by Pushpa Acharya

Rousettus prefers native and commercially unimportant fruits.

Paul Racey — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:06:28 +0000

Cage experiments in which the Malagasy endemic Rousettus madagascariensis was presented with ten fruit species (one native and the rest introduced, three of which are commercially important), showed that the bats prefer native and commercially unimportant figs (Ficus polita), rose apple (Syzigium jambos) and mountain apple (S.malaccense) to the cash crops of litchis (Litchi chinensis) and Japanese persimmon (Diospyros kaki). These important results provide a perspective on the dietary preferences of fruit bats and should be repeated on other genera of pteropodids (such as Cynopterus and Pteropus). The authors also suggest that planting Syzigium around commercial fruit trees may reduce the predation pressure of bats on such fruit.

A.R.Andrianaivoarivelo, R.K.B.Jenkins, E.J.Petit, O.Ramilijaona, N.Razafindrakoto & P.A.Racey. (2012) Rousettus madagascariensis (Chiroptera:Pteropodidae) shows a preference for native an commercially unimportant fruits. Endangered Species Research. 19:19-27.

The article can be found here: http://www.int-res.com/articles/esr_oa/n019p019.pdf

This journal provides Open Access for developing world authors

SEABCRU » bat-fruit interactions

The perils of pollination

Rousettus prefers native and commercially unimportant fruits.