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Title: Why are bats important to the environment?
Author: natural green
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1)     Who are the Bats? More than 1000 species of bat are found all around the world. Bats are the second mostly occurred mammal group. B...

enviroment, nature, bats, important of bats

1)    Who are the Bats?

More than 1000 species of bat are found all around the world. Bats are the second mostly occurred mammal group. Bat are varying from species with body size lighter than a penny to ones with wingspan with 6 feet.

Bats belong to order Chiroptera under the class mammals. Bats are the only flying mammal found in the world. Their forelimbs are modified as wings, and they have a light-weighted skeleton for the flying mode of life.

Diet: Bats show vast diversity in relation to food habits. Most of them are adapted for insect-eating. Most of the remaining bats are fruit-eating or nectar feeders. Some bat species prey upon other animals like frogs other than insects. Very few species feed on other animals’ blood. 

Habitats: They are found in each, and every habitat in the terrestrial environment expect the arctic region. But, the greatest species diversity of bats is recorded in tropical regions. Many species of bats inhabit natural ecosystems like rainforests, desserts, and mountain forests. However, a significant number of bat species are adapted to live in urban and suburban areas, parks, crop fields, and pasture farms.

Roosting place: Only a few fruits eating bat species are found as diurnal (active during daytime). Almost other bat species are nocturnal. They only go out for their food and water at night. They spend their daytime sleeping. So, bats require a safe place for resting to prevent predation attacks during the day. Such a place is called as roosting place. Trees with dense canopy and caves provide an ideal roosting place for bats. 

Adaptation for night flying mode of life: Bats are evolved to use echolocation to find food sources and fly at night without crashing into objects like trees and buildings. Bats create sound waves that coming back to them after a bounce off from objects. These sound waves help bats to understand the size and distance of the objects away from them. Each bat individual can create unique sounds and recognized their sound after the reflection. As bat nocturnal bat use sound for location, they have large ears for effective echolocation.

 

2)    What is the classification of bats?

1.     Microbats: The majority of bats are classified under microbats. Most of the microbats are insect-eating (insectivore) bats. Few other species feed on the blood of other animals such as cattle and they are named as vampires.

2.     Megabats: More than 150 bats species are found as megabats. Some of the megabat act as nectar and pollen feeders, called pollinators, while others feed on fruits, called as frugivores. The majority of megabats are larger than the microbats in the body size.

3)    What are the functions of bats?

Pollinators: The pollination of flowering plants are referred to as “chiropterophily”. Some plants are partly or wholly dependent on the bats for the pollinators. As bats are active during the night, they feed mainly on the nocturnal flower blooming plants. Bats supports for the pollination of more than 500 flowering plants around the world. Bat act as only pollinators for the plants in harsh ecosystems like mountain ranges where the insect pollinators cannot be found. Compare to other types of pollinators, and they can carry a large number of pollen grains of flowering plants into a long distance. As a result, it increases the possibility of cross-pollination among plants. Thereby, bat support to increase diversity even within the same plant species. These flowers have a white or pale color appearance, strong fragrance, and tubular shape for the attraction of the bats. Banana, Durian, Guava, Moonflower, and Mango are a few examples for the plants pollinated by bats. These plants offer nectar and pollen as rewards for the bats.

 

Seed dispersers- Like pollination, flowering plants also depend on bats for their seed dispersal. Frugivores bat act as seed dispersers for many flowering plants. Due to the high species diversity of bats, they are adapted to forage on different layers of the forests. According to a research finding, bats disperse more seeds than birds do. They carry the ripped fruits away from the trees to long distances. During their journey, they ingest the muscular fruits coat and drop the seeds to the ground floor. If these seeds fell down to the environment with favorable conditions, they start to germinate and grow while absorbing water and essential nutrients from the soil. Cashew, Jack, Mango, Guavas, and some pig species are the examples for the plants depends on bats for the s. These plants make bats accessible for their fruits by bearing fruits along the stem or the branches.

 

Prevent flowering plants from local extinction: Fruit-eating bats play an important role in reforestation in degraded woodlands by carrying seeds from trees in remote areas. It also helps to increase the tree cover in the fragmented forest areas due to various reasons like the construction of highways. Their seed dispersal action prevents the local extension of plant species that are confined to a specific area by facilitating more opportunities to expand into other areas.

 

Pest control: Insectivores play a major role in the insect pest population control. They feed on nocturnal insect species. One single bat can catch more than 600 insects within one hour. They have adaptation like a long, sticky, protrusible tongue for pray upon the insects. Bats help to control the vectors of disease cause agents of humans, including mosquitoes. Thereby, bats control the spread of infectious diseases in the human population. In addition, bats are important for controlling insect pests like moths, grasshoppers, and beetles attack to economic crops involved in agriculture. Thereby, bats’ feeding habits reduce the cost of pest control in farming.

Biological indicator: Bat is used as important biological indicators in the monitoring program of the environment. They are highly sensitive to climate change impacts and changes in the environment due to anthropogenic activities, and they tend to respond quickly even for the slight change in their environment.

 

4)    What are the harmful effects of bats?

Transmission of diseases: Bat acts as vectors (an agent transmit infectious stage of pathogens to other living beings) for some bacterial and virus origin diseases. As bat also belongs to mammals, there is a high possibility for the bat to being infected by rabbis. But there is a low risk for the transmission of rabbis from bats into a human. The rabbis can be transmitted to humans by contacting salvia of infected bats or through biting of infected ones. Furthermore, droppings of some bats species cause a lung disorder named as histoplasmosis. It is a kind of fungal disease, and the human becomes infected by direct contact through inhaling the airborne fungus spores in droppings or indirect contact through contaminated soil by the bats’ droppings.

Reservoir for infectious diseases: Bats serve as the reservoir (an agent facilitate pathogens to survival, growth and reproduction) for many diseases cause agents, and most of them cause an outbreak of diseases in humans all around the world. Viruses associated with bats have the ability to undergone adverse genetic variation as they adapt to different environmental contexts.

 

5)    What are the threats for the bats?

Habitat fragmentation and habitat degradation: Human activities, including the construction of roads, power plants and buildings, the transmission of high voltage power lines, and intensive agriculture, cause fragmentation of large forests and make them unfavorable for native species. And also, the extraction of timber removes large and fruit-bearing trees from the forest ecosystem. As a result, bats face extinction due to loss of flower and seed-bearing trees, and roosting habitats.

Climate change: Climate change has shifted the blooming season of many flowering plants or even blooming does not occur in all the year. It leads to starvation in the bat species that are partly or wholly dependent on pollen and nectar of these plants. And also, the changes in the blooming season alters the consecutive seed production. It affects the frugivores bat that involves the seed dispersers for these plants.

Predator attacks: Household pets like cats pray upon on the small-sized bats. The increase in the household cat population force a threat to some bat species.

Illegal trade for bush meat: Some African nations involved in illegal hunting and selling bats. In the bushmeat trade, small-sized frugivore bats are mainly targeted. But, some countries hunt insectivore bats as well. These bushmeat trade often carry out within the nations, and sometimes it spreads beyond the boundaries. As bats have a relatively low reproduction rate, uncontrolled hunting puts additional pressure on the extinction of bat species.

Spread of diseases: The outbreak of infectious diseases may cause adverse effects on a bat population. As an example, the bat population in the United States and Canada undergone a sudden decrease in the population in 2012 due to the spread of white-nose syndrome, which is caused by fungi called Pseudogymnoascus destructans. These diseases usually affect the skin of ears and wings of bats living caves with the humid condition.

Accidents: Due to windmills, bats deaths occur in two ways. Some have died when they hit the blades of wind turbines. Most of the bat deaths links with the damage to internal organs like lungs resulting from air pressure reduction around the windmills. When a high voltage power line is transmitted along the transit routes, feeding sites, or roosting habitats, bats are more likely to sit on them. If bats sit calmly on one high voltage line, it doesn’t make any threat to their life. But, if they expand their winds and touch adjacent lines, a complete circuit is built though their body as water and ions present in their body act as a conductor. It generates current and causes shock in bats and ultimately leads to death.

6)    How can farmers attract bats?

Farmers have to provide forage, water, shelter, and roosting places to attract bat for pollination, and pest control. So, they have to plant the nocturnal booming crop plants like banana and cocoa in their farmlands. For bats evolved to roosts in trees, species with dense canopy should be grown along the margin of the farmlands. Besides, trees are abundant with numerous insect pest species. Thereby, it ensures the continuous food supply for the insect-eating bats throughout the year. An artificial shelter should be provided for the bat species that favor resting in human-made structures. As bats lost nearly 50% of their body water daily, the supply of fresh water in a small pond or tank will attract bats to farms. Excess and harmful lighting should be avoided around the farmlands.


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