Bats carry some of the deadliest zoonotic diseases that can infect both humans and animals, such as Ebola and COVID-19. In a recently-published article in the journal Cell Genomics, a Texas A&M research team has revealed that some species of bats are protected against the viruses they carry because they commonly exchange immune genes during seasonal mating swarms.

"Understanding how bats have evolved viral tolerance may help us learn how humans can better fight emerging diseases," said Dr. Nicole Foley, from the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS). "As genomicists, our work often lays the groundwork for research by scientists who study virus transmission directly. They may be developing vaccines for diseases or monitoring vulnerable animal populations. We all depend on each other to stay ahead of the next pandemic."

Kiss me, dear:

Hundreds of bats are freezing to death as temperatures plummet in Texas.

The current winter weather is having a big impact on the state’s wildlife, with many bats falling from their colonies.

Nearly 1,300 cold-stunned bats have been rescued this week from the Houston area alone, as Texas experiences record-low temperatures.

“Our hearts go out to them, a lot of them are killed by the freeze,” Lee Mackenzie, manager of the Austin Bat Refuge, said.

“We want to help as many as we can, we can’t save them all.”

Bats ‘leapfrog’ back to roost to stay safe from predators, study finds

Researchers able to model movements of greater horseshoe bats in Devon to help conserve foraging grounds Steven Morris @stevenmorris20 Fri 12 Jan 2024 15.01 CET Last modified on Fri 12 Jan 2024 15.13 CET

Bats fly back to their roosts after a night of hunting in a “leapfrogging” pattern that allows them to maximise their time out and stay safe from predators, researchers have found.

A team from Cardiff University and the University of Sussex developed a mathematical model using “trajectory data” that tracked the flight of greater horseshoe bats in Devon to pinpoint how the creatures engage with the nocturnal environment.

They found that when they leave their roosts, typically caves or loft spaces, the bats initially spread out in a radius of about a mile for the first hour and a half to two hours, before beginning to gradually make their way home.

The furthest bat out never appeared to want to be at the periphery and so leapfrogged past the closest bat on the way back towards the roost, researchers observed.

Not only do many bats die at wind turbines, the turbines also displace some species from their habitats over large areas. When the turbines are in operation at relatively high wind speeds, the activity of bat species that hunt in structurally dense habitats such as forests drops by almost 80% within a radius of 80 to 450 meters around the turbine.

This is the result of a scientific investigation led by scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the Philipps-Universität Marburg, which is published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation. The team suggests that one of the causes of this avoidance behavior is the noise emission of the turbine rotors, which increases with increasing wind speed.

A careful look at the few bats that can walk on the ground – including the common vampire bat – is helping us understand why evolution has yet to produce a flightless bat

Original article.

Pipistrelle bats have a magnetic compass and calibrate it at sunset, according to a new study. An international team of researchers led by the University of Oldenburg has used behavioral experiments to show that two different components of the Earth's magnetic field influence the orientation of these animals. Like birds, they seem to be sensitive to magnetic inclination.

The soprano pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pygmaeus) weighs only a few grams, but it is estimated that members of this small bat species cover thousands of kilometers every year on their nocturnal migrations from north-eastern to south-western Europe. Precisely how they find their way across such long distances in the dark remains unclear.

However, an international team led by biologist Dr. Oliver Lindecke from the University of Oldenburg has found evidence suggesting that a magnetic sense may play a role in the bats' navigation. In behavioral experiments, the team discovered that two different components of the Earth's magnetic field influence the animals' orientation. The study has now been published in the journal Biology Letters.