Learn About Fruit Bats

Fruit Bat Biology | Global Status | Conservation Threats |
Regional Conservation Issues | Fruit Bat Literature

Compared to popular charismatic animals such as tigers, elephants and rhinos, the plight of bats has received less attention, less media coverage and, as a result, less funding for conservation-related activities. Decades of neglect by scientists and conservation biologists have left over half of the 1,116 bat species on our planet classified as threatened or near threatened with extinction (IUCN 2006).

Fruit Bat Conservation Apart from the few roost sites that receive protection from natural features or ancestral taboos, bats are widely hunted for food and charms, driven out of their roosts as farmlands expand, persecuted as crop pests, and devastated by natural disasters, yet are offered little legal protection in many of the countries in which they are most abundant and diverse. Island dwelling flying foxes are one of the most persecuted of all wildlife groups. Culled as crop-pests, hunted as a food item and losing the forests they rely on for food and shelter – flying fox populations are being lost at an alarming rate.

It is a commonly held belief that species occurring in large numbers such as flying foxes are not endangered. Unfortunately this is a fallacy. The population of the migratory North American passenger pigeon dropped from billions to extinction over a 40 year period as a result of changes to its habitat and harvesting for urban markets. Long before a species becomes extinct, its population can be reduced to a point where it fails to perform its essential ecosystem functions.

The importance of fruit bats to flowering plants and forest ecosystems

Life on earth is a jigsaw - each plant or animal being connected to others by processes we call ecological functions. Pollination and seed dispersal are examples of ecological functions that fruit and nectar bats provide as a service to people.

Fruit Bat Conservation Fruit and nectar feeding bats play a pivotal role in the ecology of tropical rainforests, sharing the role of seed dispersal and pollination with birds and insects. By visiting flowers in search of nectar, the bats pick up and deposit pollen from flower to flower, pollinating them and allowing viable seeds and fruits to grow. In addition, fruit bats disperse the seeds of fruits, either by carrying off the fruit to eat it or depositing seeds in their droppings as they fly. Because fruit bats can fly long distances, they are able to move between flowering trees which are widely separated, helping maintain forest diversity and regenerate forests at a landscape scale. Old world fruit bats eat the fruit, nectar or flowers of more than 300 plant species from 59 families, and these plants rely on the bats for seed dispersal and pollination (Fujita & Tuttle, 1991). In fact, fruit bats are the primary means of seed dispersal for many tropical plant species.

Flying foxes are particularly important in oceanic islands where they are often the only flying animals big enough to transport larger seeds. Flying foxes have been shown to be the sole pollinator and seed disperser of the silk cotton tree (Ceiba pentandra) on the island of Samoa in the south Pacific (Elmqvist et al., 1992). Nectar feeding bats are important pollinators of many wild as well as important agricultural plants like durian, mangoes, cashew, figs, balsa, dates, kapok and others. Fruit Bat Conservation Some plants, described as 'chiropterophilous' by Elmqvist et al., (1992), produce flowers that appear to be especially designed to be pollinated by fruit bats. Some fruits have an unusual smell, like the infamous durian of south east Asia, which is repellent to humans but appealing to fruit bats, and may have evolved for that reason (Pierson & Rainey, 1992).

It is estimated that more than 134 plants that yield products used by humans are entirely or partially reliant upon bats for seed dispersal or pollination (Fujita & Tuttle, 1991). Thus, any threat to the world's fruit bats must be viewed with an appreciation of the wider reaching consequences their disappearance would have. If the fruit bats go the ecosystem will suffer as a result and this will be felt at every level, including fruit agriculture, which has a highly significant role in the economies of tropical countries.