The perils of pollination

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.